Macvidcards: radio silence after sending unflashed GTX 1080

[dfnum2]

Hi All,

I just bought a GTX 1080 card from Macvidcards, and when I received the card, it turns out that he didn't flash it with the modified firmware. No boot screen, blank until login screen.

I emailed him and he asked what firmware version is reported by System Report. Sure enough, it was "VBIOS 86.04.3b.00.84", which is a stock version, according to the Nvidia website. I reported the result, and never heard back, despite several additional polite reminders over the past month.

Has anyone had a similar experience? Basically, I got a used video card for the price of a new card, without manufacturer or merchant warranty. That wouldn't bother me if it were flashed and backed by Macvidcards, but clearly something is amiss with him. Has anyone else had the same experience?

Does anyone have a GTX1080 flashed with his firmware who might be willing to dump the binary and send it to me? I can provide proof of purchase to prove I'm not trying to pull a fast one.

Many thanks,

Dave

 

[jbarley]

Has anyone had a similar experience?

Yes!

 

[rawweb]

You're certainly not the first, seems to be more and more complaints these days. Even on his own website, and it doesn't look like he always responds to people with questions or critisism. IMHO, the guy is off the deep end a bit. I've seen his postings around the net and he seems very bitter about things and certain people. It may be founded, I don't particularly know or care? But one thing is for sure, it's absolutely no way to run a business. A shame, he was once a very great resource. I personally don't think I would do business with him anymore.

If he doesn't refund your money, report to your financial institution ASAP and have them see what they can do.

Just poked at the BBB, he's not accredited but there are some similar complaints:
https://www.bbb.org/losangelessilic...-los-angeles-ca-719173/reviews-and-complaints

For what it's worth, I emailed him a question back in October and never got a response. Not sure what is going on, but it cemented my above feelings. Hit or miss is not somewhere I want to spend my hard earned dollars.

 

[pertusis1]

I hate to see this theme again. I got a card from MVC several years ago and have been thrilled with the product, and didn't have any problems. Sadly, though, we regularly see posts just like yours. Usually in the end, he makes it right, but it sometimes takes an awfully long time.

 

[Dr. Stealth]

I have major problems with MVC and the way he does business.

He takes a Copyrighted Nvidia ROM, changes a couple Bytes and then proclaims it belongs to him.

Then he has the balls to post on his web site:

"If you purchased a Mac Pro system from Edit Builder and it contained a MacVidCards GPU, please contact us. They are not authorized resellers and are selling pirated copies."

Really ? You are not an authorized reseller either and you are selling pirated copies of Nvidia's Copyrighted ROM.

 

[mattspace]

He takes a Copyrighted Nvidia ROM, changes a couple Bytes and then proclaims it belongs to him.

The thing is, he's not selling pirated copies of Nvidia's rom, he's selling modifications to the original rom, which stays with the hardware for which it's licenced.

When he modifies a card, the number of copies of Nvidia's firmware remains the same.

He's not increasing the number of extant copies of Nvidia's intellectual property. That's a critical point, because all IP law pretty much flows from that core concept - the owner of the IP gets to control the number of extant copies of their IP, and who gets the revenue from the activity of causing an increase.

When someone else flashes a card with MVC's firmware, the number of extant copies of MVC's IP increases, without his control, or ability to receive revenue.

This is why secondhand book sales don't get the author additional royalties, because they don't result in an increase in the extant number of copies in the world. This is what underpins the part of the first sale doctrine that allows anyone to buy, modify and then resell pretty much any product.

The question of whether his modifications are a protectable invention, or a non-protectable discovery are of course open to debate, and will depend on whether a particular jurisdiction allows for IP protection of a discovery (eg the BRCA1 breast cancer gene), or merely the tools necessary to utilise that discovery.

If the changes he makes are the only change that can be made in order to achieve the result, and any independent clean-room re-implementation would get the exact same result, then what he's got would likely count more as a discovery, than an invention, and it's protectability would be questionable. Then it's down to a matter of whether the method he uses to make the changes is novel (his flashing utility could be proprietary, even though the flashes it performs are not).

The fact that he's distributing his proprietary bit as a derivative product of someone else's product doesn't give anyone else the right to disregard his copyright, however and just duplicate what his flashing tool outputs to re-duplicate it - whatever the natural justice feelings people might have are, that's not generally the way IP laws operate.

 

[goMac]

The thing is, he's not selling pirated copies of Nvidia's rom, he's selling modifications to the original rom, which stays with the hardware for which it's licenced.

When he modifies a card, the number of copies of Nvidia's firmware remains the same.

He's not increasing the number of extant copies of Nvidia's intellectual property. That's a critical point, because all IP law pretty much flows from that core concept - the owner of the IP gets to control the number of extant copies of their IP, and who gets the revenue from the activity of causing an increase.

It doesn't matter. This is still considered piracy. Especially because he sells it.

Trust me I've been there.

He might have a tiny bit of an out because he can claim he performs a service and he's not selling code that is Nvidia's. But if what he performs is a service he can't claim ownership of the ROM.

Either he's selling ROMs or he's not.

I don't think Nvidia cares about what he is doing. But he'd have a real hell of a time actually suing anyone for redistributing his ROM given he's selling someone else's ROM.

His "I'm going to make you agree not to reverse engineer my ROM trick" is nice but I'm pretty sure Nvidia's license agreement also forbids you from reverse engineering their ROM so again he's doing exactly what he says not to do.

 

[mattspace]

It doesn't matter. This is still considered piracy. Especially because he sells it.

whatever the actual legal technicality - it's still between Nvidia and him. The fact that he might be infringing on someone else's IP, doesn't give anyone else the right to infringe on his (derivative works are still generally considered separate works, for copyright purposes). If Nvidia wants to take his changes and backport them into their firmware, perfectly reasonable IMHO. B stealing from A, doesn't give C the right to rob B.

 

[pierrox]

If it was just about flashing the card, the ROM would be available online for sure. It doesn't take long for the internet to publish any sorts of stuff that was supposed to be secret. He's also modding the card so that it can be flashed with a bigger rom.
I'm not defending the guy, don't misread me though.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

whatever the actual legal technicality - it's still between Nvidia and him. The fact that he might be infringing on someone else's IP, doesn't give anyone else the right to infringe on his (derivative works are still generally considered separate works, for copyright purposes). If Nvidia wants to take his changes and backport them into their firmware, perfectly reasonable IMHO. B stealing from A, doesn't give C the right to rob B.

If firmware or software are being hacked with a hex editor that's not derivative works. It's the same thing software crackers do on piracy networks and how region hacks are done on DVD players/consoles.

 

[mattspace]

If firmware or software are being hacked with a hex editor that's not derivative works.

not a lawyer, but i've sat through enough copyright lectures that I'd hazard a guess that his changes, in themselves, would probably count together as a "work" for copyright purposes, given that he includes unique identifiers to himself in them (his credit info iirc). If all it was, was the functional changes, and they were the one and only way to do what he does... maybe a non-protectable discovery, not an invention (depending on your jurisdiction). IIRC America however is one of the territories where discoveries are more likely to be protectable, not less.

The fact that crackers use those same techniques to circumvent piracy protections doesn't seem relevant to me. If you can arrange standard audio notes together to produce a protectable specific tone, like the Intel Inside tone, there's no reason to suppose changing a few values within a standardised set of options to produce a new set of novel behaviour wouldn't be similarly protectable.

I still find it interesting that noone else seems to have come up with a parallel clean-room version of his EFI hack, to make it a DIY option. I wish they would, because the idea I'd have to either buy a card from him, which would attract a 10% duty on import, or buy one here & pay to ship it to and from America is just nuts.

 

[MacDawg]

All the legalese mumbo jumbo aside... apparently he has extremely poor customer service and OP has little recourse

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

not a lawyer, but i've sat through enough copyright lectures that I'd hazard a guess that his changes, in themselves, would probably count together as a "work" for copyright purposes, given that he includes unique identifiers to himself in them (his credit info iirc). If all it was, was the functional changes, and they were the one and only way to do what he does... maybe a non-protectable discovery, not an invention (depending on your jurisdiction). IIRC America however is one of the territories where discoveries are more likely to be protectable, not less.

The fact that crackers use those same techniques to circumvent piracy protections doesn't seem relevant to me. If you can arrange standard audio notes together to produce a protectable specific tone, like the Intel Inside tone, there's no reason to suppose changing a few values within a standardised set of options to produce a new set of novel behaviour wouldn't be similarly protectable.

I still find it interesting that noone else seems to have come up with a parallel clean-room version of his EFI hack, to make it a DIY option. I wish they would, because the idea I'd have to either buy a card from him, which would attract a 10% duty on import, or buy one here & pay to ship it to and from America is just nuts.

These boring discussions go way back to the days of 32 bit clean ROMs in the 80s. 32 bit clean ROM SIMMs were sold for profit but also freely passed around for flashing.

BUT if you want to go in that direction and argue that a hacked firmware/software develops right to intellectual property or "derivative works" then if these hacked products are sold for profit the supplier would have to offer consumer protections, fast customer support and full warranty.

 

[esatamacmodular]

Can someone chime in about state of affairs with 10XX and PCI-e 3.0? I was under the impression that there are Nvidia web drivers for 10.12.4+ and 10.13, but I'm mostly reading about this for eGPU and could be getting confused here. From what I understand MVC enables 10XX cards but the bandwidth is limited to PCI-e 2.0 speeds. Yet, MVC remains popular so now I'm even more confused ... maybe people just want the native boot screen that you do not get with web drivers? Or maybe they want to use on previous versions of OSX?

 

[mattspace]

if you want to go in that direction and argue that a hacked firmware/software develops right to intellectual property or "derivative works" then if these hacked products are sold for profit the supplier would have to offer consumer protections, fast customer support and full warranty.

I agree entirely - the ability of the software industry to argue that their products are “as is” and exempt from basic “fitness for purpose” is one of the great cons played at consumer’s expense.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I agree entirely - the ability of the software industry to argue that their products are “as is” and exempt from basic “fitness for purpose” is one of the great cons played at consumer’s expense.

I'm not saying that and I won't say the software/hardware industry is perfect. Nvidia are far from it. They shove this **** BETA web driver in Mac user's face for the last 3 years and laugh at y'all. They're thankful for the extra sales but they keep the driver in beta so they don't have to give proper support.

In that case it is perfectly understandable that people will hack their firmware to make the cards work better with the old Mac Pro. If the guys hacking the firmware wanna charge money they need to support the product they sell if they do it through a a company/LLC. If they do it person to person like from Jeff to Bob then there isn't an obligation to support - only an obligation to offer the product.

 

[Biped]

B stealing from A, doesn't give C the right to rob B.

Based on a cursory reading, I'm tempted to put forth that this might be the 'mother of 'the root of all evils' ' . I could understand this being a legal axiom. But certainly not an ethics one. Granted I'm probably wrong.

Put another way. If B does not play by the rules, B should not be able to seek refuge in them.

 

[Dr. Stealth]

Biped.... I think you are running on all four..... Like the rest of us....


1. I download Photoshop.

2. I change one Byte in the 2 GB of code.

3. I now proclaim the application belongs to me and claim all rights.

4. I sell many copies for a nice profit.

5. Adobe would be Okay with this right ?

6. Wrong.

 

[mattspace]

Put another way. If B does not play by the rules, B should not be able to seek refuge in them.

And B would not have refuge in the law... from A
[doublepost=1519007278][/doublepost]

3. I now proclaim the application belongs to me and claim all rights.

No, only the rights to the specific changes you make, and requiring you to buy a full retail copy of Photoshop for each "custom modded" version you then resell.

That's what MVC is doing.

 

[Dr. Stealth]

Anyone can buy a flashed ROM card from him and dump the ROM and post it all over the WEB including Mac Rumors. He has NO recourse.

If I wanted to add his EFI rom to my cards then I would buy one card from him, dump the ROM and post it here on MR for anyone else to try. And then sell many mac EFI cards on eBay.

But I won't..... I'd have more fun working on my own ROMs.

 

[Biped]

And B would not have refuge in the law... from A

To avoid a long winded forky type diversion of the topic at hand, but not dismiss an interesting opportunity; I would add to a pool of contributing topics by mentioning, for consideration : extra vs intra judicial processes, expectations of trust in game theory models, and how they deviate from modern legal ethics. With a dash of acknowledgement of slippery slopes, and a smidge of agreement to stay away from strawman type arguments, perhaps we can pretend we had a lengthy and charitable discussion about it. But for the sake of good forum etiquette leave it just tossing a few simple logic type statements back and forth.

 

[mattspace]

Anyone can buy a flashed ROM card from him and dump the ROM and post it all over the WEB including Mac Rumors. He has NO recourse.

If I wanted to add his EFI rom to my cards then I would buy one card from him, dump the ROM and post it here on MR for anyone else to try. And then sell many mac EFI cards on eBay.

Can isn't the same as should. Again, whether his contribution is protectable or not is probably going to be very much up to what jurisdiction one is in - eg when Antigua won a WTO ruling allowing them to ignore all American copyrights, and to resell American copywrited material without providing compensation to the copyright holders.

To me, what he is doing is similar to custom car modifiers who buy, modify, and then sell complete vehicles - their designs and modifications are protected by intellectual property laws. You can't just buy one of their cars, take casts off their bodykit parts, and start selling your own versions, on the grounds that the original unmodified car wasn't their design.

But maybe what he's doing falls below a threshold of a minimum amount of work necessary to produce a new distinct "work". Again, I find it odd that it isn't commoditised and independently achieved if it's so inherently minor as to not attract protection.

 

[h9826790]

Can someone chime in about state of affairs with 10XX and PCI-e 3.0? I was under the impression that there are Nvidia web drivers for 10.12.4+ and 10.13, but I'm mostly reading about this for eGPU and could be getting confused here. From what I understand MVC enables 10XX cards but the bandwidth is limited to PCI-e 2.0 speeds. Yet, MVC remains popular so now I'm even more confused ... maybe people just want the native boot screen that you do not get with web drivers? Or maybe they want to use on previous versions of OSX?

PCIe 2.0 is the cMP’s hardware limit. Nothing to do with MVC. In macOS, the Nvidia graphic card’s will neogitiate at PCIe 2.0 Speed with the web driver regardless of flashed or not.

However, in Windows, only the flashed card can run at PCIe 2.0 speed on the cMP.

And I believe the main reason to use a flashed card still because of the boot screen. But not it’s PCIe 2.0 ability in Windows.

 

[flowrider]

I have a question for all you naysayers. What if EVGA or MSI did what MVC does, and sold the card as a Mac Edition?

Lou

 

[mattspace]

And I believe the main reason to use a flashed card still because of the boot screen. But not it’s PCIe 2.0 ability in Windows.

To put that in perspective - a non-flashed card in a cMP booting into windows is going to have the same available bandwidth as a card in a TB3 eGPU.

PCI1x16 = PCI2x8 = PCI3x4 iirc.