Hi everybody,
I have a somewhat special problem. I have a cMP 3,1 with an original 2600XT graphics card, and I have 1 NVidia GT210 and 2 Radeon 4870 GPUs, all PC cards with no EFI/boot screen support. These PC cards work on OS level, but no boot screen.
Just for fun, I wanted to flash the 4870 cards with a firmware that includes an EFI part. The first attempt using the Apple updater and the original Apple 4870 ROM magnificently failed, and now I have one 4870 card with a corrupt ROM, resulting in an endless boot chime loop when installed. (Yes, stupid, the card is NOT the reference 4870 design).
I managed to install freedos on a harddrive, added ATIFLASH.EXE, and now when I boot with the other (still good) 4870 card installed, ATIFLASH seems to find and correctly identify the card. So it seems if I had a good ROM image for it, I could flash the card. However, I would prefer keeping this card as it is, and continue my experiments with the other card.
So here's my question: Can I and how can I boot into freedos and have the now corrupt card in a PCIe slot? For instance, can I use Open Firmware to tell the Mac 'Ignore what's in PCIe slot x for now'? Or can I hot-plug the card while freedos is already running without the risk of causing damage to the Mac?
And before you ask: No, I do not own a PC. Of course I can borrow or buy one, but since I got so far already on the Mac, I am eager to get the job done using the Mac only.
Any ideas?
Christoph
I have a somewhat special problem. I have a cMP 3,1 with an original 2600XT graphics card, and I have 1 NVidia GT210 and 2 Radeon 4870 GPUs, all PC cards with no EFI/boot screen support. These PC cards work on OS level, but no boot screen.
Just for fun, I wanted to flash the 4870 cards with a firmware that includes an EFI part. The first attempt using the Apple updater and the original Apple 4870 ROM magnificently failed, and now I have one 4870 card with a corrupt ROM, resulting in an endless boot chime loop when installed. (Yes, stupid, the card is NOT the reference 4870 design).
I managed to install freedos on a harddrive, added ATIFLASH.EXE, and now when I boot with the other (still good) 4870 card installed, ATIFLASH seems to find and correctly identify the card. So it seems if I had a good ROM image for it, I could flash the card. However, I would prefer keeping this card as it is, and continue my experiments with the other card.
So here's my question: Can I and how can I boot into freedos and have the now corrupt card in a PCIe slot? For instance, can I use Open Firmware to tell the Mac 'Ignore what's in PCIe slot x for now'? Or can I hot-plug the card while freedos is already running without the risk of causing damage to the Mac?
And before you ask: No, I do not own a PC. Of course I can borrow or buy one, but since I got so far already on the Mac, I am eager to get the job done using the Mac only.
Any ideas?
Christoph
