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Madr

macrumors member
Dec 9, 2020
52
8
You won't see the 5450 because as far as I know Apple never sold it so it won't come with a Mac bios. The default card my 1,1 came with was passively cooled, I think. Not sure if it was the stock card, though. I switched it for an Apple HD 5770 I got cheap from a second hand shop. I don't think they realised it was the Mac variant otherwise the price would have quadrupled.

Here's a thread on the 5450. You may have to edit a .plist or two and forgo the boot picker screen. I can't remember what I had to do on my hackintosh but there was a lot of editing .kexts and .plists along the way. Sadly, Netkas' site is long gone. If there was a way to flash the Mac ROM onto the card, it would probably have been there in the forum somewhere.

I don't need the bootpicker. I just use startup disk if i want to switch operating systems but i think it will be 1 el cap install migrated from 10.8.2 in the end.

My mac 5770 was very cheap because it was sold to me as broken that could be fixed but worked the first time i tried it at home. But that card is not low wattage like the 5450.

And thanks i saw that too. Will try. I got an odd brand so my hopes are not high for it to be easy.

But you use the 5450 in a mac still right? Does it have no bootpicker?

And a shame netkas is gone. I blew a pc 5770 with a bios back then and avoid tempering with bioses if not needed.

Although wayback machine still has the forum

 

weckart

macrumors 603
Nov 7, 2004
5,975
3,696
I don't need the bootpicker. I just use startup disk if i want to switch operating systems but i think it will be 1 el cap install migrated from 10.8.2 in the end.

My mac 5770 was very cheap because it was sold to me as broken that could be fixed but worked the first time i tried it at home. But that card is not low wattage like the 5450.

And thanks i saw that too. Will try. I got an odd brand so my hopes are not high for it to be easy.

But you use the 5450 in a mac still right? Does it have no bootpicker?

And a shame netkas is gone. I blew a pc 5770 with a bios back then and avoid tempering with bioses if not needed.

Although wayback machine still has the forum

I used it in a hackintosh and I got a bootpicker but different rules apply with hackintoshes because you are putting a PC card into a PC. There will be a mismatch of graphic card firmware with the EFI of your MacPro losing you the bootpicker or any display until El Capitan's display drivers kick in.

The reason for picking the 5450 was that it was a low profile card, which was the only thing that would fit into the case I put it in and the passive cooling would also cut down on any ambient noise while the server was up. I also only needed basic graphics while I and others were working out how to hack the hardware to run OSX.
 
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Madr

macrumors member
Dec 9, 2020
52
8
Thank you! I forgot you put it into a hackintosh. I've build like 5 or 6 of them and there is a lot of info on getting this card to work in a system like that which could also help me logically to get it running on a real mac pro if the info on the apple link you posted earlier doesn't work.

About that post. There was 1 person who just swapped cards and it would run oob.

Anyway will try the ati5000 edit when i receive the cards and will let know if they work and if my wattage will come down.

Will also search the netkas through waybackmachine if there is way to flash a card like that as an option.

And all this got me thinking about trying to fix my pc version 5770. I only tested it without any other video card in a pc i think. If i add it to a system with another video card maybe it gives me more info. But will be tricky because i think my system where i saved my original bios to has crashed and i had to wipe the install. And i think the bios of videocards are tuned for the specific card you buy but not sure.

Anyway if the 5450 doesn't work i have a pc version of a gs 8400 which was running in my hack which i want to migrate to the mac pro 1,1
 

weckart

macrumors 603
Nov 7, 2004
5,975
3,696
Thank you! I forgot you put it into a hackintosh. I've build like 5 or 6 of them and there is a lot of info on getting this card to work in a system like that which could also help me logically to get it running on a real mac pro if the info on the apple link you posted earlier doesn't work.

About that post. There was 1 person who just swapped cards and it would run oob.

Anyway will try the ati5000 edit when i receive the cards and will let know if they work and if my wattage will come down.

Will also search the netkas through waybackmachine if there is way to flash a card like that as an option.

And all this got me thinking about trying to fix my pc version 5770. I only tested it without any other video card in a pc i think. If i add it to a system with another video card maybe it gives me more info. But will be tricky because i think my system where i saved my original bios to has crashed and i had to wipe the install. And i think the bios of videocards are tuned for the specific card you buy but not sure.

Anyway if the 5450 doesn't work i have a pc version of a gs 8400 which was running in my hack which i want to migrate to the mac pro 1,1
I have two genuine Mac HD5770s. If you need the Mac bios from that I can find a way to dump that. It might already be up on Techpowerup though.
 
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Madr

macrumors member
Dec 9, 2020
52
8
I have two genuine Mac HD5770s. If you need the Mac bios from that I can find a way to dump that. It might already be up on Techpowerup though.
Thanks! I also have 2 original mac 5770's and i'm have found my win 7 HD which is running now on my 1,1 with atiflash and gpu-z

Anyway this will be bit off topic

Tried both the mac 5770 and the pc 5770 in it to boot el cap but it started a boot loop.

Put in the x1900, one of the 1,1 came with, and i could boot into win 7

Then added the pc 5770 and it installed the drivers on next boot.

350 watt though but that was expected with 2 video cards

Main goal is to get the 5770 pc card working again while i'll wait for the 5450's to come in.

GPU-z sees both cards but the info was incorrect the first time missing a lot and sensors said +/- 30000 degrees C. There was GPU info but no memory info.

But then suddenly it showed the correct info. Only the fan rpm didn't work but not sure it has a rpm sensor. No output on the hdmi output though.

But the memory info not showing at first maybe a big clue i think.

----

rewind to the card history

Flashed the pc card year ago but i don't think i made notes and have no idea which rom i installed

Yep kind of stupid. Also i can't my original rom but haven't checked everything yet.

Anyway card worked for some time but don't think i had a bootpicker but to be clear it was inside a hackintosh.

It replaced at 4870 which was very wattage hungry even for just simple desktop stuff. The 5770 was much better at power handling

Later it stopped working with no output.

I used a 1000 watt hair dryer for 10 minutes on the gpu chip back then but didn't do anything.

---

Back to now

The 5770 pc card is a Sapphire HD 5770 Vapor-X

And have found all the bioses for 5770 and the Sapphire HD 5770 Vapor-X specific here


I'm going to try some of these bioses but my hopes are not high.

I get 3 green lights on vapor x so that means there is max power.

I think i overheated the gpu or the ram. The fact the info in gpu z goes on and off makes me think that.

But i have a SMD hot air workstation now so i may try that.

Could be some pins of the gpu and ram are disconnected from the pcb.

And reheating it with hot air may fix it.

But i also suspect something else. Maybe a controller which outputs the gpu z info.

Although i think that the gpu does that but not an expert.

I got gpu z pictures if you're interested.
 

Madr

macrumors member
Dec 9, 2020
52
8
I think i bricked it.

Found an old usb stick with a lot of roms and all the flash software.

Tried the 5570pc which was the oldest and i think the one i made before flashing it the first time but nothing changed after reboot.

Tried some others but atiflash kept saying they were the same so it wouldn't flash.

Before i tried the original pc bioses from techup i tried the 5570_vervet_netkas.efi

Reboot and win 7 said it can't see the 5770 anymore.

So i think i have to go this route


The .efi extension should have warned me. Because it should be .rom

oh and before i bricked it, gpu-z didn't change to the correct info and back to a lot of info missing. It was permanent missing info. Maybe it's heat thing and it takes longer.

Anyway let's try to find the bios chip next.
 

Madr

macrumors member
Dec 9, 2020
52
8
Found the netkas tread through wbm


(I think i flashed that efi file, which is completely wrong, onto the bios. And when i read this tread i now know where i got that file which i think is not bios at all! )

Also found this one


But that is for later.

Found the flash bios chip on the vapor x 5770 card next to the made in china sticker

Flash Type : PM25LV010 (128 KB)


Will try to unbrick the 5770 in the next couple of days
 

weckart

macrumors 603
Nov 7, 2004
5,975
3,696
Well, we live and learn. Just make sure you get the right PC bios for the PC card depending upon the VRAM chips you have on board before reflashing to Mac. I have noticed that some people do get into a bootloop with El Cap and the 5770 but I wonder if this is something to do with the installation. On mine, I'm pretty sure I upgraded from an existing installation; maybe that is the way to go?
 
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Madr

macrumors member
Dec 9, 2020
52
8
Well, we live and learn. Just make sure you get the right PC bios for the PC card depending upon the VRAM chips you have on board before reflashing to Mac. I have noticed that some people do get into a bootloop with El Cap and the 5770 but I wonder if this is something to do with the installation. On mine, I'm pretty sure I upgraded from an existing installation; maybe that is the way to go?
Thanks! I'm back at the 5450 and i finally got it working!!

First i tried https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4091453?sortBy=rank

But it would hang or restart. My thought was that i have 5770 in the system too and that could mix up something so i installed x1900 as main GPU.

Then i tried:

https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/8ufcvs
Which added that i should also edit AMD RadeonX3000.kext

===== instructions incase that forum goes down =====
okay so you go to System/Library/Extensions you make a backup of the two kexts just in case, after that you copy and paste the two wherever you want so we can work on them, we gonna start with AMD RadeonX3000.kext :

-You right click on it and you select Show Package Contents

- You gonna have a folder Contents, in it there's this file "info.plist"

-You open info.plist with TextEdit ( if you have any plist opener like XCode or anyother you use it)

-once the file opened in it you're going to search for "AMDCedarGraphicsAccelerator" you can find it under " IOKitPersonalities "

-under "AMDCedarGraphicsAccelerator" you're going to search for <key>IOPCIMatch</key> under it you should have <string>0x68E01002</string> you gonna edit and add 0x68F91002 in result you gonna have it like <string>0x68F91002 0x68E01002</string>

-we finished with AMD RadeonX3000.kext close it and save it.

-we gonna do almost the same thing for AMD5000Controller.kext

- You Show Package content then open info.plist

-once open under <key>IOPCIMatch</key> you gonna edit you add like the once before 0x68F91002 which will result you something like this <string>0x68F91002 0x68981002 0x68991002 0x68E01002 0x68E11002 0x68D81002 0x68C01002 0x68C11002 0x68D91002 0x68B81002 0x68B01002 0x68B11002 0x68A01002 0x68A11002 </string>

-Once finished you close it and save of course

-after that if you have kext application like Kext Wizard you gonna install the two modified kext then rebuild cache if you don't have any kext application you simply replace the two old kext at System/Library/Extensions with the new ones ( modified ones )

- after that you need to rebuild cache if you don't know how you open terminal and you type

sudo kextcache -i /

-reboot your hackintosh and hopefully it should work.

======

From these instructions i changed one thing compared to the apple site instructions and that is that i added 0x68F91002 IN FRONT of the string instead of the end.

Sure i doubt this will make a difference. But to be complete on what i did.

Now i have to make a new el capitan boot disk again ( which is not a normal install) and then add my 2 old raid 0 so i can migrate my 10.8.2 to this machine.

But i must also first make a 10.8.2 boot disk for the Mac Pro 1,1 so i can go back.

Also i have finally ordered some thermal paste for the Low idle watt cpu's i had ordered.

Thanks again and I'll keep you posted!

ps the 5770 will come later. But on my list.
 
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weckart

macrumors 603
Nov 7, 2004
5,975
3,696
Nice. I stuck at Snow Leopard Server for mine so it just worked out of the box and being a hackintosh I didn't need to flash it to get bootscreen support under Clover. BTW, the 6450 will work just as well but I'm not sure it is any real improvement over the 5450.
 
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