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Race to dump the 4870 ROM, Who's first?
- Thread starter MacVidCards
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Having similar issues with that card in the early '08 MP...doesn't appear to want to fit in Slot 1. Looks like I'll just have to resort to using it in Slot 2 for the time being. Successfully got it flashed and driving a 1680x1050 and 1280x1024 pair of displays.
Edit: I take that back about driving both displays. I'm getting stuck with a blue screen on both upon boot (but when I press the power button to sleep, both displays momentarily properly display their contents), so I'm just driving the widescreen display so far.
Good to hear! I'll keep working at it then. So far I'm at a loss though
If anyone with the 288 1gig card could post their fixed ROM that would be a huge help as well! (if not comfortable with that please IM me)
2 cards, a splitter off of each onboard connection... with both connections from the splitter going to the same card or alternate cards?
Either way, I'd be very worried about drawing too many amps across those connections. I don't know what gauge wire is used on the trace on the motherboard. I'd like to find out what the maximum draw in watts or amps they are rated for.
I don't think I'm willing to take the risk.
I tried to warn people about this in earlier posts. The screws stick out too far to put it in the first slot, they hit the memory cage on a lot of these boards. From what I've seen, if your board doesn't have a metal support bracket in the back, the screws are probably too long. Look at various pictures of boards on newegg to see what I mean.
I ended up just going with slot 2 for the moment as well until I decide if I am going to be able to get the card working correctly. After starting over again from scratch and trying multiple combinations of ports/monitors I can say that nothing that involves a resolution over 1280x1024 will work regardless of which port is used. Is there anything special about that resolution?
Is there a card with similar specs, but isn't problematic space-wise? Because that's exactly the card I was thinking of getting.
And OS X was stable - and graphic intensive work or games, anything that stressed the card worked fine with running both PCIe taps out of one port using a splitter? Or am I misinterpreting what you've described, AG?
And OS X was stable - and graphic intensive work or games, anything that stressed the card worked fine with running both PCIe taps out of one port using a splitter? Or am I misinterpreting what you've described, AG?
I was able to get the modified sapphire 512mb rom working (after 6 hours of trying to get dos to boot with atiflash). I can run my 30" ACD fine, but when I plug in my 24" dell to the other dvi port, the screens both go blue and eventually the computer restarts itself.
Managed to hose an XFX 1GB 4870
But I know what went wrong...
I used pipomolo42's instructions to create a custom rom with Apple EFI portion. The part that got screwed up has to do with the mapping of the original ROM in the card.
1. The size of the bios portion in the original XFX rom is 0x200 bytes larger than the size of the bios portion in the Apple rom.
2. The location of what appears to be some sort of jump table (or parheps soft strap code) is the same for both the Apple and XFX roms: 0x1B800
3. Pipomolo42's code inserts the efi portion at the correct location in the XFX rom, but since that location is 0x200 bytes larger than the location in the apple Rom, the tail end of the efi code tramples over the first 0x200 bytes of the jump table or whtever it is.
So, what would be the correct course of action to get this ROM working? Should the jump table or whatever it is simply be pushed down another 0x200 bytes to make room for the larger bios portion?
Also, is there absolutely no way to recover the screwed up XFX card on a 2008 Mac PRo? Do I have to try and find a PC to do this with?
Thanks!
-Robert
But I know what went wrong...
I used pipomolo42's instructions to create a custom rom with Apple EFI portion. The part that got screwed up has to do with the mapping of the original ROM in the card.
1. The size of the bios portion in the original XFX rom is 0x200 bytes larger than the size of the bios portion in the Apple rom.
2. The location of what appears to be some sort of jump table (or parheps soft strap code) is the same for both the Apple and XFX roms: 0x1B800
3. Pipomolo42's code inserts the efi portion at the correct location in the XFX rom, but since that location is 0x200 bytes larger than the location in the apple Rom, the tail end of the efi code tramples over the first 0x200 bytes of the jump table or whtever it is.
So, what would be the correct course of action to get this ROM working? Should the jump table or whatever it is simply be pushed down another 0x200 bytes to make room for the larger bios portion?
Also, is there absolutely no way to recover the screwed up XFX card on a 2008 Mac PRo? Do I have to try and find a PC to do this with?
Thanks!
-Robert
Sounds like the same issue I was having with dual displays. Back to running on the 8800GT until my other 6-pin Molex connector arrives. I can't close my case when I'm patching from the optical drive power connectors, so I'd rather not introduce more unnecessary dust for now.
Any thoughts from others if this is a driver/kext issue or a firmware issue? Sounded like some earlier commentary gave me hope this is a driver/kext, although I'm not sure how much easier that would be to address.
Bootup sure was quieter with the 4870 in place, instead of the 8800GT's turbine fan blaring.
I used pipomolo's from page 13.
I put my 8800gt in slot 2, running power from the extra molex in the optical bay and connected my second monitor to it. Both monitors are running great and after I receive a molex extension cable, I should have no problem closing the case.
Thank your reply, seen I still love my 8800GT, but for later I will buy 4870 *2 run crossfire in windows, because on intel board just crossfire can run.
I was sent this ROM by another member here.
The most interesting thing that I noticed right away is it's size...156K.
We enter the era of 256K Flashrom chips with this card.
We should all be quite thankful that the 4870 rom didn't extend a trifle past 128K, I'm surprised actually.
tobyg said:
So far, I've connected the two outputs of each splitter to the same card in order to reduce cable clutter. Since the worst power figures I've seen for two 4870's are <500W for the whole system, and substracting ~100W for "everything but the cards" and 2x75W for power provided via the PCIe slots, I figure pulling >300W via the booster cables (the limit specified by Apple) seems really unlikely.
What I'm really trying to say here is that this beats getting power from the ODD bay, which for me resulted in a PSU shutdown multiple times. Of course, bringing in another PSU will certainly never make things worse...
TheStrudel said:
With one card, OS X is certainly stable, but the driver seems less than stellar - while Core Animation effects are noticeably smoother than with the NVidia drivers, it seems that subpixel rendering is applied inconsistently across the screen, and of course the driver crashes with the second card installed... Definitely "beta" quality here.
The only stress-testing I've done has been in Windows, with two cards (running Crysis Warhead in 2560x1600 with Crossfire on). I haven't noticed any stability problems for more than an hour there. Time will tell...
Yes, that's the way to do it. If you look around 0xba00 in your original rom, you should find the offset to this table, and you can then change this value and move the table accordingly. Or you can PM it to me.
I'm affraid it's not possible to do it on a EFI machine : it scans all cards at boot time, whereas BIOS just stops after the first one it initializes.
Yes you need a PC
And important, Boards with integrated chipset graphic don't work to flash back the BIOS, you need on this Boards also a PCI Graphiccard.
Err, mine does. The BIOS has an option to specify which one should be used first : Integrated or PCIe
For reference, it's an Asus V3-M2A690G Barebone.
hi elvisizer,
would you send me your modified ROM please? i have same card sapphire Radeon HD4870 with 1 GB P/N 288-20E85-130SA SKU# 11133-04-20R
Thank you
best regards
testmn3d
I'd like to second that request! At least then we could rule that out as a possible issue for those with the 1 gig 288 cards still having some issues.
Thanks!
Yeah, get a call that my pci-e power cables arrived, so i will try flashing my card today.
Yust kneed to find a solution to save the orig. rom on my MacPro 1,1, cause only booting with FreeDOS on cd works, but can't change to fat partion .-(
(boot camp)
Bye, jaberwocjky
Yust kneed to find a solution to save the orig. rom on my MacPro 1,1, cause only booting with FreeDOS on cd works, but can't change to fat partion .-(
(boot camp)
Bye, jaberwocjky