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Race to dump the 4870 ROM, Who's first?

Rom chip location on Saphire 4870

The area circled in green on the wide shot is made more legible on the tight shot. Please note no disassembley of card or fan is needed to see this particular chip. So it is hopefully the same on Mac one. Would be great to get a scan of back of Mac card, in high enough res to read the text on board.

This is a 128K ROM chip on a 4870 of the PC variety. Part number matches 128K item. (I have bumped it up in Photoshop to make it easily readable)

Good news is I had a look at the PC 4870 ROM in Hexedit. There looks to be a standard ROM, a BUNCH of dead space, and then more code, followed by more dead space.

Alltogether, the blank portion of ROM is between 20-30%. So, there may be space in there for EFI.
 

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Oh that actually doesn't look so bad to desolder. If it had pins through the board it might've been a chore. Let's hope it fits within 128k and none of this is needed.
 
3870 Rom

Hi,

if someone got the 3870 Rom please upload it somewhere or send me an email supercard@gmx.at

Already installed a larcher eeprom but the rom i got doesnt seem to work...

Thanks
 
I do believe that the original dumps of 3870 ROM were done viz GPU-Z in WIndows and thus did NOT contain the EFI Mac part.

There were later dumps of the ROM from DOS which got the whole thing.

You should dig through the threads on the 3870.

But you have illustrated my point that as people get their Mac Pro '09s with 4870, they will likely need to use ATIFlash in DOS to dump the WHOLE Mac EFI ROM .

Good luck with the 3870 !

So...again...who is gonna be first to post a Mac 4870 ROM?
 
I hope we don't have to wait until the first upgrade kit 4870's like mine ship in april to get the ROM.
 
I don't think so. The first 2009 Mac pros ordered with a built-in HD 4870 should arrive this week...
 
I just hope those who have ordered them BTO have the will/interest to do the work to extract the rom. ;)
 
How to Dump ROM

This guy gave a great tutorial for creating a DOS CD.

I did this and it works fine from a CD.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/5001145/

Then you will need ATI Flash to put on the root of some drive you use in bootcamp:

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1123/ATIFlash_3.60.html

If the Mac 4870 is only card in, type "ATIFLASH -s 0 mac4870.rom"

It should verify that a certain number of bytes have been saved.

Reboot into OSX or Windows and retrieve the file.

I think you will need to ZIP it to attach here.

If you don't want to post, PM me.
 
What if your bootcamp drive has an NTFS file system? You're not going to be able to see it with DOS.
 
mackmack said:
What if your bootcamp drive has an NTFS file system? You're not going to be able to see it with DOS.
Click to expand...

This is why I really, really like having a "Neutral Ground" FAT32 partition of about 15GB where I can put files that any OS can deal with.
 
Couldn't you stick atiflash on a bootable usb drive? Or can you only boot from discs?
Click to expand...

i don't think the macpro will boot from a usb stick... i tried it with the 9800... it was a no go.



now i'm a total noob at dos; do you just boot from a blank fat32 partition or do you hafta install xp on it? does formatting it with bootcamp install dos?
 
You have to burn the DOS files onto a CD instead of a floppy disk. Boot from the CD and voila you're running DOS. You'll need an FAT formatted partition to run atiflash and save the ROM.
 
barefeats reports that there have been successful instances of the 4870 running on the 1,1 mac pro. i hope so! Just shelled out a few bucks to upgrade the processors, now i guess i'll start saving for the 4870 if it does work with the mac pro classic.
 
bozz2006 said:
barefeats reports that there have been successful instances of the 4870 running on the 1,1 mac pro. i hope so! Just shelled out a few bucks to upgrade the processors, now i guess i'll start saving for the 4870 if it does work with the mac pro classic.
Click to expand...

Do you have a link? Would be fantastic news :).
 
bozz2006 said:
barefeats reports that there have been successful instances of the 4870 running on the 1,1 mac pro. i hope so! Just shelled out a few bucks to upgrade the processors, now i guess i'll start saving for the 4870 if it does work with the mac pro classic.
Click to expand...

If that's true, I'll get to squeeze a bit more life out of my old 2.66 quad. That would be excellent news.
 
bozz2006 said:
barefeats reports that there have been successful instances of the 4870 running on the 1,1 mac pro.
Click to expand...

Yay!!!

I have been hopeful that 4870 "not working" was Apple's way of selling more '09's.

But this just makes me REALLY hopeful that someone will find time in the near future to dump the 4870 ROM in DOS. I have a PC 4870 here waiting.....

If there is someone in LA/Hollywood area with the 4870 and a machine...I would be happy to bring over the DOS CD and a FAT32 drive. Whole process takes under 3 minutes.
 
I PM'd Wonder Snausage but no answer thus far.

Who else has a 4870?

Even if someone is unwilling to do a ROM dump, it would be great if someone would scan back of their card, or post pix of it OUT of machine.
 
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