wrapping up a 9600 kansas powermac rebuild

[mentaluproar]

I'm having trouble with a a friends old kansas powermac 9600. It has a sonnet G4 CPU and some ATI Radeon 7000 GPUs and a nightmarish SCSI bus that seems to be only somewhat cooperating. I got 9.2.2 patched and installed, as well as the sonnet CPU extensions and patches, replaced the PRAM battery, fixed up conflicts and an improper termination on the the SCSI bus, and now have only 2 remaining problems.

First problem: We want just one GPU to be installed, and want it to be one of the ATI 7000 cards, not the original GPU. But the only card that will show an image on a failed boot is the original card. I'm reading that the 7000 GPUs were probably PC versions and have different roms so before the OS loads, there's nothing that understands how to talk to them. Before I flash any ROMs, I want to better understand what I'm dealing with. There's an attached pic from the apple system profiler below.

Second, the system rarely boots to anything but a black screen unless you hold C (for cd boot) or option (which just skips to the os 9 drive). there is a macos 8.5 that was working fine on there before on another drive but I dont seem to be able to get it to boot anymore. It's suspect if I set it in startup disk X that would work though.

So how do I know what to flash onto these radeon 7000 GPUs? where can I get the ROMs? I was able to get hold of a PC with PCI slots so I can probably flash the cards with linux on that but again, I'm not entirely sure I'm chasing the right problem here.

 

[joevt]

You can start with the info at http://themacelite.wikidot.com

Maybe you can find some debugging tips at
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...l-work-in-a-beige-power-macintosh-g3.2303689/
You may need a serial cable for accessing Open Firmware.

Radeon 7000 GPUs may have fcode that uses a preference from NVRAM. This preference is not available in Old World Macs until the OS starts which means it doesn't help Open Firmware. Old World Macs can have NVRAM preferences up to 8 bytes in length but newer PCIe cards might try to add a preference that is longer than that. The preference should appear in the name registry as a property with a 4 character name (For the Radeon 7000, the property is named "RVAD"). Apple has a Mac OS 9 app to view the name registry called "Display Name Registry". There's a version 1.1 and a version 2.0. I made my own app called "DumpNameRegistry".

If the display boots as black, then can you use the other display connected to the original GPU to check what resolution the black display is trying to use? And then change the resolution of the black display to a valid resolution. And restart. Does the display now boot as not black?

Maybe find a VNC server for Mac OS 9 so you can use another Mac to view and control the 9600 if it boots to a black screen.

 

[mentaluproar]

I know the 9600 is an old world rom but does it have open firmware? I thought that was a new world rom thing.

 

[joevt]

I know the 9600 is an old world rom but does it have open firmware? I thought that was a new world rom thing.

All PCI Power Macs have Open Firmware. Open Firmware versions are listed at:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...l-work-in-a-beige-power-macintosh-g3.2303689/

GPUs for PCI Power Macs must have an Open Firmware image (contains fcode) in their PCI Option ROM.
Built-in GPUs have their fcode built into the Mac ROM.

Older NuBus Power Macs do not have Open Firmware.
(except Copland has a disk based Apple Open Firmware that is loaded by System 7.5 for Power Mac 6100, 7100, 8100)

 

[weckart]

So how do I know what to flash onto these radeon 7000 GPUs? where can I get the ROMs? I was able to get hold of a PC with PCI slots so I can probably flash the cards with linux on that but again, I'm not entirely sure I'm chasing the right problem here.

Old thread but my tuppence worth: I have flashed quite a few ATI 7000s in my time. The best seem to be the Sapphire variety. These look like the card below.



These have 64MB of VRAM and are capable of 1920x1080 resolution. The only problem is that the BIOS chip on it is a tad too small to hold the full Apple BIOS. You can try to flash a reduced Apple BIOS onto it or replace the chip for something more capacious. The BIOS chip is reasonably isolated from the other onboard components and is fairly easy to remove. Even a craft knife should do the trick. A bit of flux and a quick touch of the contacts with a soldering iron should be enough to attach the new chip.

Otherwise you could look out for a SUN XVR100. That is basically the exact same card as the Apple Mac ATI variety, albeit with a SUN BIOS on it. The downside is that most of these cards only have 32MB of VRAM and so your max screen resolution will top out at 1680x1050.

 

[mentaluproar]

that looks like what we have. I wonder if it already has the apple bios on it or not. Is there an easy way to tell?

 

[weckart]

that looks like what we have. I wonder if it already has the apple bios on it or not. Is there an easy way to tell?

If it has the Apple BIOS on it, then it should "just work". Most likely, it will have had the BIOS chip replaced if so, so a quick look at the soldering on that should give you a clue.