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1,1 Mac Pro ATI Radeon 4870 problems

T

Tariomaster

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 23, 2007
11
0
I got an ATI Radeon HD 4870 512mb Gcard for Christmas, and have been trying to flash it to work with my 1st gen Mac Pro ever since. After following every guide I could find, and trying everything possible, I haven't gotten it to work. Even ask me what I haven't tried (try it). I also have a PC from my friend to test it out.

The only problem is, after installing a different Mac ROM, my Mac Pro no longer boots with the card in, and the chime even cuts off early. The same thing happens with the PC, no boot.

Does anyone have advice on what I can do at this point?
 
What model of 4870 and what ROM did you use?

You need the PC to rescue your card since it prevents your Mac Pro from booting. In the PC BIOS options, you can modify the boot sequence so that the PCIe slot holding the 4870 is not initialized first. The PC will need to have another GPU. Use ATIFlash in DOS. You can format a DOS boot floppy in Windows (xp at least).

I hope you saved the original BIOS. If not, you're in trouble. :rolleyes:
 
I used the ROM from this page (post 2 on the page):
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/661681/

And my dad got me the card and tried to flash it using the Zeus flashing tool after I got it, and he assumed he could just flash it with no problem, so I have no backup of the ROM. He bought it from someone with a Hackintosh, so it was not a NEW card. We ran into trouble when he flashed it with a 1GB card's modded ROM instead of the correct 512MB ROM. I found out that with a CD with UBCD loaded on it would flash the card, and we got a working PC ROM to work with bootcamp, but we needed one to work with my Mac partition.

Sadly, the PC and the Mac both do not boot at all if the card is in - regardless of where the monitor is plugged in, which is why I'm posting this.
 
Also, before anyone says to search; I have, and it seems like there is nothing at the moment on this.

Someone please help me, because I have been working on this for at least 10 hours now, and I still have a broken card.
 
Read my first post again:
-What model of card?
-You need to tweak the PC BIOS options for it to boot with the 4870. The monitor must be connected to another graphics card. Even if the PC boots, the 4870 won't work until it's flashed with a compatible BIOS.
 
PN 288-10E85-030SA
SKU 11133-03

These are all I could get off the back of the card, as it did not come with a box.

How would I go about changing the BIOS on the PC? Could I do this on my Mac Pro as well?
 
So it's a sapphire... Why didn't you try one of the sapphire ROMs proposed by Zeus? You used the unmodified Apple ROM, which basically doesn't work in any PC card (only the very first models).

The Mac Pro has no BIOS, you can't set any option.

Have you tried booting the PC with another graphics card in it (in addition to the 4870)? You need another graphics card. That could be the card that was previously in your Mac Pro. They generally work in PCs (except the X1900XT, which has no BIOS).

Generally, how to access BIOS settings is briefly shown on screen during the boot sequence. You may need to hold F12 or F8 or perhaps F2. I'm not sure, and it may depend on your PC.
Then, you will need to select the slot holding your other graphics card as the primary video. This may be done in a PCI section of the BIOS, but again, I can't tell you for sure since I don't have PC here.
 
Yes, there is another graphics card in the PC. The only problem is that it does not boot at all if we put the ATI card in, giving me no way of flashing it to a PC ROM.
 
I tested a few configs and this is what I got:

With the Nvdia 7300 in slot 1, ATI slot 2: Chime cuts off early, no boot.

ATI in slot 1, Nvidia in slot 2: Chime loops, no boot.

No ATI card in, Nvidia in slot 1: Complete boot, no problems.
 
Well I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the card is bricked at this point?
 
It's not. What you see is just typical of a 4870 that has been flashed with an incompatible BIOS.
You need to have the PC boot with the card. Forget about the Mac for now.
Again, try to access the BIOS settings and set the primary PCI slot as the one holding the other card then start the PC with the 4870 in it. That's the only way you're going to recover the card.
 
Okay so if I can get PC to boot, then should I use a bootable drive with UBCD on it, or is there another application I should use once I'm on the PC?
 
UPDATE: I got a PC working, and restored the card to a ROM from the Golden guide to flashing, and it works in bootcamp, with the card in slot 1, Nvidia in 2, but my Mac partition still freezes at the loading screen if the ATI card in the computer at all. Any help at all is appreciated.
 
Q1: What OS you're running?
Q2: Which ROM you've used?

I had similar issue with flashed HIS 1GB 4870. It doesn't want to run with 10.5.8, but with 10.6 and above it runs perfectly (no kexts messing needed).

If you want to create another EFIROM for your card (I've read that you don't have original PC ROM), you can try to generate it with Zeus (or manually using pipomolo42 method) using ROM attached in last post of this thread: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=103728

This ROM should work with Sapphire card as well, as it's stated here: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2069848
 
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