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Edit: Assuming you tried to boot from a FreeDOS CD, and it didn't work: You do not need a full-blown Bootcamp/Windows setup. You don't even need to run the Bootcamp wizard (however, a small FAT32 volume on the internal hard disk comes in handy in the process). All you need to do is install the Bootcamp package, which should install the firmware update during the next reboot. If you decide you do want to backup your original (4870) ROM, which is highly recommended (I'd have a fancy paperweight by now otherwise), you still don't need Windows - FreeDOS will do. In that case, run the Bootcamp wizard, let is shrink your hard disk by a couple of MBs, and simply don't insert a Windows CD when prompted to do so.

OK, this sounds totally reasonable. I'm all excited!

So one last question: any reason at all to go with the Sappire over the XFX/XXX?

Maury
 
Nope. The XFX gives you dual DVI, the Sapphire doesn't (according to some reports). So if you have two monitors, go with the XFX. Beware, though, that the XFX doesn't work with the ROM mentioned in your instructions - this card needs some special treatment when it comes to injecting the EFI part into the ROM. See my post a few pages back for details. Also make sure that your monitor doesn't have a Samsung panel inside, regardless of the card you choose.
 
The fact that Apple OEM 4870s are also prone the "mouse jump" issue is a GOOD thing.

It means that the issue will likely get resolved via driver/firmware update.

So even if the XFX seems especially prone to this behavior now, it will likely be fixed sometime in near future.
 
wait, my 30 in Apple cinema display has a panel made by Samsung. Am I to assume that cinema displays have problems as well or only Samsung retail panels?

I haven't seen many single cinema display issues yet. Also, the xfx working with dual displays is awesome. I bet that we will see an update to fix the sapphire cards for this though.
 
Nope. The XFX gives you dual DVI, the Sapphire doesn't (according to some reports). So if you have two monitors, go with the XFX.

They are two dual DVI cable ports, though. I feel like better custom ROMs or better driver support should make this possible. If it remains impossible after 10.5.7, we should put our heads together for a fix. Enough of us have the Sapphire ones - which are theoretically, MDP aside, the same as the  OEM card.
 
How to run Mudbox benchmark

I run Mudbox RC (I'm a beta tester for Autodesk) and it's slower on the flashed 2.5 GT/s card. It has a built in benchmark - one mesh gets 104 FPS on the 5.0 GT/s Apple Radeon 4870 and 80 FPS on the flashed 2.5 GT/s. This app is all about bandwidth and does sculpting on the card (not with the CPU) and it's noticeably faster on the 5.0 GT/s one. Maya and Cinebench are also faster on the 512 MB card

The whole reason I bought this flashed one was for Mudbox since it's so GPU memory hungry. I have a PS3 for games so I don't bother with gaming stuff.

I've downloaded and installed the Mudbox 2009 for Mac trial and I can't find any benchmarking built in to the application. The only mention I see in their forums about benchmarking is a .bat file for the Windows platform. I must be missing something really obvious, right?
 
hit command option b. I don't think it's in the menus - I only learned about it from editing the keyboard shortcuts
 
Then I loaded the motmot and natit kext (read this whole thread) and all worked well. IMPORTANT: when installing into the system folder BE CAREFUL! I had to custom change the permissions of natit by using the utility “batmod” -you can find this app on MacUpdate

What is the motmot and natit kext for? I've tried reading the whole thread but I'm missing why this is important.
 
don't work for me

So, here is how I do it:

- get the Mac 4870 rom available in this thread (named 4870.ROM)
- get the 128k vgabios of your PC card (named pc4870.rom)
- get tyhe fixrom.py script that I attached here

run the following commands in a shell (either MacOS X or Linux)
Code:
dd if=4870.ROM of=efi.part bs=1 skip=63488 count=49152
blocknum=`printf %d "'\`dd if=pc4870.rom bs=1 skip=2 count=1 2>/dev/null\`"`
size=$(($blocknum * 512))
dd if=efi.part of=pc4870.rom bs=$size seek=1 conv=notrunc
python fixrom.py pc4870.rom pc4870.rom

first one extracts the efi part of the Mac rom
then get the number of 512 bytes blocks of the bios part of your pc rom
then converts it to a size in bytes
then injects the efi part right after the bios part
then the script fixes last rom indicators and checksums

You can then flash the pc4870.rom to your card, using FreeDOS for instance

If you want to do manual modifications to either part of the rom, don't forget to run the fixrom.py script after.

This should work with most (if not all) of the 4870 cards. If it doesn't work for you, just pm me a link to your pc vgabios.

EDIT : MAKE SURE YOU HAVE EXTRACTED THE FULL 128K OF YOUR CARD'S ROM BEFORE TRYING ANYTHING, OR ELSE IT WON'T WORK!
ALSO, MAKE SURE YOUR PC 4870 ROM FILE IS ACTUALLY NAMED "pc4870.rom" IF YOU GET AN ERROR MESSAGE LIKE "dd: bs must be between 1 and 2147483647"

I have tried this method on a radeon 4870 HD Powercolor 1GB. When using the script in mac terminal (fixrom.py and xcode installed) with my extracted original rom renamed pc4870.rom and 4870.ROM, everything goes apparently well. Now, when I flash this modified pc4870.rom with atiwinflash, the radeon still work but again only in windows bootcamp. What is wrong:mad:? I joint the "modified" pc4870.rom after running the script in the event an expert in this forum may have a look....that I would be very grateful..Incidentally, I have also tried efi4870GB.rom and macxfx.rom, but atiwinflash refused to flash them....
 

Attachments

  • pc4870.ROM.zip
    45.4 KB · Views: 129
Put a little more time into this.

HexEdit has a wonderful "Compare" function.

Drag before and after ROMS into it and Hit "APPLE K" and you will be able to see what changes you have made.

If you have inserted MAC EFI properly, you will see that a whole lot of "FFFFFFFFFFF" gets replaced with code that opens with "55AA"

DOS (via FreeDOs) is a better choice than WInflash
 
Put a little more time into this.

HexEdit has a wonderful "Compare" function.

Drag before and after ROMS into it and Hit "APPLE K" and you will be able to see what changes you have made.

If you have inserted MAC EFI properly, you will see that a whole lot of "FFFFFFFFFFF" gets replaced with code that opens with "55AA"

DOS (via FreeDOs) is a better choice than WInflash

Many thanks for the advice. Indeed, with Hexedit, I can see that the rom was unchanged by the script. I will try again...
 
we finished aty_init, now you can try 4870/4850 on macpro without flashing card. You still need some efi-supported card to boot OSX tho (for example 2600xt/7300gt).

just install pkg

old version deleted, look for a new one in my next posts


in worse case you will need to edit plist of natit.kext (for example, change ATY,binimage for 4850/4870 to your own bios image).

If osx will refuse to boot into gui, you can easily uninstall it from single user mode.
 
we finished aty_init, now you can try 4870/4850 on macpro without flashing card. You still need some efi-supported card to boot OSX tho (for example 2600xt/7300gt).

just install pkg

http://rapidshare.de/files/46852855/ATI_Init.pkg.html


in worse case you will need to edit plist of natit.kext (for example, change ATY,binimage for 4850/4870 to your own bios image).

If osx will refuse to boot into gui, you can easily uninstall it from single user mode.

How about a 4890?
 
in worse case you will need to edit plist of natit.kext (for example, change ATY,binimage for 4850/4870 to your own bios image).

If osx will refuse to boot into gui, you can easily uninstall it from single user mode.

First of all: THANK YOU!

How do you do the uninstall in single user mode? I don't want to try this with the possibility of not being able to boot to gui anymore

Also, since you still need a mac-native card to boot to gui, won't that card be the "primary" card? For instance, if I have a 2600XT and a non-mac 4870 installed, is it simply a matter of allocating 16 lanes to the 4870 and only a few (like 4) to the 2600XT? If you have 2 DVI cables connected to your 4870, will the machine just boot from the 2600XT and then turn over monitors to the 4870?
 
How do you do the uninstall in single user mode? I don't want to try this with the possibility of not being able to boot to gui anymore

Also, since you still need a mac-native card to boot to gui, won't that card be the "primary" card? For instance, if I have a 2600XT and a non-mac 4870 installed, is it simply a matter of allocating 16 lanes to the 4870 and only a few (like 4) to the 2600XT? If you have 2 DVI cables connected to your 4870, will the machine just boot from the 2600XT and then turn over monitors to the 4870?

deleting it in single suer mode :

mount -uw /
rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/Natit.kext
rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/ATY_Init.kext
reboot

about rest of ur questions - let us know when u try it all :)
 
we finished aty_init, now you can try 4870/4850 on macpro without flashing card. You still need some efi-supported card to boot OSX tho (for example 2600xt/7300gt).

just install pkg

http://rapidshare.de/files/46852855/ATI_Init.pkg.html


in worse case you will need to edit plist of natit.kext (for example, change ATY,binimage for 4850/4870 to your own bios image).

If osx will refuse to boot into gui, you can easily uninstall it from single user mode.

Does this work with the 4870x2? After installing the package my screen went black. I tried switching the monitor connection around between the four DVI ports of both my 4870x2 and 2600xt, but no picture came back.
 
Does this work with the 4870x2? After installing the package my screen went black. I tried switching the monitor connection around between the four DVI ports of both my 4870x2 and 2600xt, but no picture came back.

it doesnt work for 4870x2, u need to insert binimage to 4800 series section in natit's plist, or, rename 4870 section to 4800 and 4800 to smth else
 
it doesnt work for 4870x2, u need to insert binimage to 4800 series section in natit's plist, or, rename 4870 section to 4800 and 4800 to smth else

Are you saying it doesn't work full stop, or it does work by doing the above?

You posted screenshots of the 4870x2 successfully working on a hackintosh. Does this method work for OS X on a regular Mac? Is there a ROM I need to flash my card with?
 
it needs a lot of work.

on osx side it's solved(aka 4870x2 works on hackintoshes)

updated pkg, now it's supposed to support 4870x2 (binimage from master card for 4870x2 inside).

matching of aty_init was changed to match strictly 48x0

http://rapidshare.de/files/46858601/ATI_Init.pkg.html link was update at XX:23

if your 4870 card doesnt work with stock 4870 mac rom (absolutely doesnt work, means macpro cant startup with stock 4870 macpro rom), then you need to replace binimage(bios image) for 4870 section in natit with your own.
 
it needs a lot of work.

on osx side it's solved(aka 4870x2 works on hackintoshes)

updated pkg, now it's supposed to support 4870x2 (binimage from master card for 4870x2 inside).

matching of aty_init was changed to match strictly 48x0

http://rapidshare.de/files/46858601/ATI_Init.pkg.html link was update at XX:23

if your 4870 card doesnt work with stock 4870 mac rom (absolutely doesnt work, means macpro cant startup with stock 4870 macpro rom), then you need to replace binimage(bios image) for 4870 section in natit with your own.

Woohoo, my 4870x2 is working :D

A big thanks to you Netkas and the rest of you hackintosh guys for all your hard work, it's very much appreciated.
 
are you guys that are using the non-flashed cards getting 5.0 GT/s? sorry to harp on this - it's just that I'm going to sell this 1 GB this week if I can't get the link speed to match the retail card.
 
Another question: had anybody yet worked out the deal with the crash when a second monitor is plugged into flashed 4870s? I may have missed that, but I'm again wondering if that's a flashing issue or a driver issue - in other words, will 10.5.7 fix that? While we're on the subject, will 10.5.7 fix analog support or allow the use of both ports as dual-link?
 
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