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Race to dump the 4870 ROM, Who's first?
- Thread starter MacVidCards
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Though it might work, I doubt the Moderators would be too happy about it.
At least they could tell us if the ROM has 128kb or more. To do this you would not even need a FAT32 partition on your HD.......
PM or email seems to be about the best way I can think of to get the attention of those who have the HD 4870 in-hand.At least they could tell us if the ROM has 128kb or more. To do this you would not even need a FAT32 partition on your HD.......
Just resist the urge to be a pest about it. That way, they, nor the Mods would have any reason to get mad. Its amazing that NOBODY can be bothered to dump this ROM for us.
I'd be happy just to see some pix of the Mac 4870.
In the past, Apple routed the DVI signals backwards compared to PC cards.
Hence the trouble getting FX5200 and 6800 cards to have usable DVI.
The Strangedogs ROMs that made those cards work on Mac fixed this.
We were never able to get as far with ATI cards.....so when 9800XT and X800 flashes resulted in VGA only....we got stumped.
Netkas' result of needing a DVI to VGA adapter on second output seems to imply that there may be more of this going on. And also keep in mind that 4870 may have other hardware hurdles in place, like the 3870 Mac did.
But we can't begin tackling ANY of the potential issues until we get that ROM.
I'd be happy just to see some pix of the Mac 4870.
In the past, Apple routed the DVI signals backwards compared to PC cards.
Hence the trouble getting FX5200 and 6800 cards to have usable DVI.
The Strangedogs ROMs that made those cards work on Mac fixed this.
We were never able to get as far with ATI cards.....so when 9800XT and X800 flashes resulted in VGA only....we got stumped.
Netkas' result of needing a DVI to VGA adapter on second output seems to imply that there may be more of this going on. And also keep in mind that 4870 may have other hardware hurdles in place, like the 3870 Mac did.
But we can't begin tackling ANY of the potential issues until we get that ROM.
before anyone gets worked into a lather....
file was 64K, so same issue when the 3870 was first out....appears that earlier version of GPU-Z or Nibitor was used to extract in Windows....thus missing the crucial EFI part.
I am informed that it might be possible to retry
FIngers crossed.......
file was 64K, so same issue when the 3870 was first out....appears that earlier version of GPU-Z or Nibitor was used to extract in Windows....thus missing the crucial EFI part.
I am informed that it might be possible to retry
FIngers crossed.......
Strange as also the Windows part should be slightly bigger than 64K, shouldn't it?
I think pages back in this thread I linked to a different page where an older version of GPU-Z would only pull out a 64K ROM.
I'm guessing this noble soul is using an earlier version of this program.
Only thing that makes sense.
I'm guessing this noble soul is using an earlier version of this program.
Only thing that makes sense.
Could you upload the rom somewhere, or check it's content ? is it a vgabios ? a EFI firmware ? does it have the "last rom indicator" bit set (see http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=50701) ? This would let us know whether the dump is incomplete.
By the way, is it was dumped using GPUz, it means someone has windows (bootcamp) installed, which in turns means, that ati winflash can be used instead of the freedos trick, which is also a lot easier.
And when asking people to dump stuff, don't forget to ask them to report the size of the rom chip too
winflash usage is here : https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/5849184/
There is one last possibility : the missing part of the rom could simply be in the machine's firmware, instead of the video card's firmware. This was done for instance with the first versions of the X1900XT firmwares : it only included the EFI part, and the vgabios part was inside the machine's EFI firmware, and loaded from here when starting bootcamp. But the fact that an official Mac 4870 works on a 2006 Mac Pro makes this a bit unlikely.
Edit : You shouldn't trust GPUz for rom dumping. It always dump the first PCI OpRom only, (except for 4870, where it now dumps the full 128k). So, it will NOT dump a usable rom image if there is an 2nd OpRom with EFI firmware in the rom, and it will NOT dump a usable rom image if your card does not match the vendor id and device id of a stock 4870.
By the way, is it was dumped using GPUz, it means someone has windows (bootcamp) installed, which in turns means, that ati winflash can be used instead of the freedos trick, which is also a lot easier.
And when asking people to dump stuff, don't forget to ask them to report the size of the rom chip too
winflash usage is here : https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/5849184/
There is one last possibility : the missing part of the rom could simply be in the machine's firmware, instead of the video card's firmware. This was done for instance with the first versions of the X1900XT firmwares : it only included the EFI part, and the vgabios part was inside the machine's EFI firmware, and loaded from here when starting bootcamp. But the fact that an official Mac 4870 works on a 2006 Mac Pro makes this a bit unlikely.
Edit : You shouldn't trust GPUz for rom dumping. It always dump the first PCI OpRom only, (except for 4870, where it now dumps the full 128k). So, it will NOT dump a usable rom image if there is an 2nd OpRom with EFI firmware in the rom, and it will NOT dump a usable rom image if your card does not match the vendor id and device id of a stock 4870.
Still Need The 4870 Rom !!!!
So, our well meaning friend sent a truncated file and so far I haven't received a full one.
I'm going to slap a 3870 in my MP and see if WinFlash pulls the whole ROM.
Meanwhile....still be best if someone would just take 15 minutes and do this for everyone from DOS.
Who's gonna be the Hero?
So, our well meaning friend sent a truncated file and so far I haven't received a full one.
I'm going to slap a 3870 in my MP and see if WinFlash pulls the whole ROM.
Meanwhile....still be best if someone would just take 15 minutes and do this for everyone from DOS.
Who's gonna be the Hero?
Winflash is fantastic : the amount of data it dumps is specified on the command line. So in our case, when we specify :
20000 here stands for 0x20000 bytes in hexa which is equal to 131072 (or 128k) in decimal value.
It can also display the type and size of the rom chip when you invoke it as :
Also, I tried it with a PC version 4870 already , and indeed it dumped the whole rom correctly ...
In the firs 64kb part of rom (which i dumped from ioregistry), i can see start of efi rom block(2048 bytes), it mention there ATY,Motmot (framebuffer driver for 4870), So i think gpuz should be fine on dumping whole rom.
This is very same to 2600xt/3870 firmware.
This is very same to 2600xt/3870 firmware.
4870.rom
Hope it works this time. If so: enjoy!
4870.ROM
On the first attempt I used these instructions, which resulted in the 64K rom (or actually only 0xF800 bytes saved; 0xF400 checksum).
Now I did
to get the rom size (20000), and then
to extract it (0x20000 bytes saved, 0x5496 checksum). Thanks to pipomolo42 for the proper/complete instructions.
I used the FreeDOS CD with option 1 then 5 (1 then 3 resulted in long phases where it would not accept keyboard input, and strange errors when using DOS commands like DIR).
ATIFlash was on a (empty) bootcamp partition, conveniently labeled C:
Hope it works this time. If so: enjoy!
4870.ROM
On the first attempt I used these instructions, which resulted in the 64K rom (or actually only 0xF800 bytes saved; 0xF400 checksum).
Now I did
Code:
atiflash -i
Code:
atiflash -s 0 4870.ROM 20000I used the FreeDOS CD with option 1 then 5 (1 then 3 resulted in long phases where it would not accept keyboard input, and strange errors when using DOS commands like DIR).
ATIFlash was on a (empty) bootcamp partition, conveniently labeled C:
I've got it but I'd rather not post the link in the thread. Those who want it can PM me.
EDIT:
I'll upload to RS a few times as well, just to get it out there a bit more.
EDIT:
I'll upload to RS a few times as well, just to get it out there a bit more.