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

gzfelix said:
Thank you very much! This Natit package works perfectly on my Sapphire 4870 512M card with a 1920x1080 display and a 1680x1050 display.
Click to expand...
W00T! :)
No problem at all, sleep mode, resolution changes, rotation...?

Now Netkas... next challenge. :)
People are having problems with some 4890s on Mac Pros: single DVI working. I was thinking that it could be solved the same way.
Correct me if I am wrong... If we (I mean, you :p) use the BIOS of a 4890 that supports dual screen on Mac Pros, and build a Natit like the one you just did with its bin_image in the plist... maybe it will enable dual screen on other the "bad" 4890s?

There's a difference with 4870, though. The 4890s that don't do dual screen can still be initialized by the generic bin_image you included in natit. While the newer 4870s (typically, those that won't do dual screen on Macs) just won't boot OS X with the Apple ROM (constant reboot).
 
Have you noticed a speed hit, like the one the other guy reported having occurred in OpenGL testing?
 
gzfelix said:
My Mac Pro cannot come back from sleep if Natit is installed and used.
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Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. Many hackintoshes with 48x0 cards have problems coming back from sleep. So this also affects Mac Pros. I wonder if it's due to the Apple ROM being used in ioreg, while it was not designed for the specific PC card used...
It's not due to Natit per se, because when natit uses the original card's BIOS, sleep mode works correctly (at least, no problem reported from Macbidouille).
If my theory (ahem) is correct, editing natit's plist with your card's BIOS, instead of Apple's BIOS, should restore sleep mode (but you'll lose dual screen). Of course, that natit would be useless.
 
jeanlain said:
Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. Many hackintoshes with 48x0 cards have problems coming back from sleep. So this also affects Mac Pros. I wonder if it's due to the Apple ROM being used in ioreg, while it was not designed for the specific PC card used...
It's not due to Natit per se, because when natit uses the original card's BIOS, sleep mode works correctly (at least, no problem reported from Macbidouille).
If my theory (ahem) is correct, editing natit's plist with your card's BIOS, instead of Apple's BIOS, should restore sleep mode (but you'll lose dual screen). Of course, that natit would be useless.
Click to expand...

Interestingly though, it does not come back from sleep (stand by) but deep sleep (hibernation).
 
jeanlain

new aty_init supposed to work ok then, it extracts bios from card, to initialize card.

it inserts bin_image to ioreg from plist (if not present there, it inserts bin_image extracted from card).

also, maybe need to try to replace binimage in that mini_natit with one from XFX cards.
 
netkas said:
jeanlain

new aty_init supposed to work ok then, it extracts bios from card, to initialize card.

it inserts bin_image to ioreg from plist (if not present there, it inserts bin_image extracted from card).

also, maybe need to try to replace binimage in that mini_natit with one from XFX cards.
Click to expand...
I'll try that when I get my card.

The new aty_init... is it the one that combines also natit in a single kext? People at macbidouille failed to make 4890s work with this one, although one people here successfully used it on a 4870X2, IIRC.

So, the old ATY_init/natit worked the opposite: initialize card with the bin_image in the plist file and insert the card's BIOS into ioreg? Because if natit has always used the plist bin_image for insertion into ioreg, well that did not activate both DVI ports for some 4890s (including sapphire cards).
 
Is 2.5 GT permanent or OS X only?

Hmm. Flashing 2 xfx 4870 cards is becoming an attractive sollution if Crossfire capability and 5 GT link speed are both retained under Windows in Boot Camp. Are CF and GT link speed normal in Windows?
 
jeanlin, old natit+aty_init wasnt able to extract bios image from card, so they used bin_image from plist of natit
 
Just tried the Natit.kext on with my flashed PC SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB with OS X 10.5.7 and now the second monitor is working fine. This is really good news so thanks to those responsible.

Have not tested the possible sleeping issue yet.
 

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Successul flashing of a sapphire 4870 1Go, using Pipomolos's method. :)

Way quieter than the X1900XT in a Mac Pro 1.1. So far so good in OS X. I may do some tests with natit when I have the time.
 
VisionTek 4870 on '06 Mac Pro

I saw a VisionTek 4870 512MB on clearance at Best Buy yesterday for $164.99 so I picked it up. I even had a RewardZone coupon for $15 off :) It appears to be the first gen version. I flashed it with the rom that appears on page 6 of the thread and it worked great, no troubles once I figured out the flashing procedure. After that I over-clocked it and it's running at 935Mhz ram and 785Mhz processor after editing the rom. The UPC on the box is 784090025067.

After that, I took my Apple first gen Mac Pro 8800GT and reflashed it using the PC version of Nvidia 8800gt bios from:

http://www.mvktech.net
http://www.mvktech.net/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,26/func,selectfolder/cat,72/page,3/

The NVIDIA 8800GT PCIe 512MB - Rev 01 rom worked great after I flashed it and put it in my wifes PC. I popped out the old 7900GS that's been there for years, put in the Mac 8800GT with new PC rom and it worked great. Cheap upgrades all around!

I had to boot the Mac Pro in DOS though, that was the only way I could figure out to have access to the EFI 8800GT and still be able to flash it. I'm sure there's other ways, but that worked out for me. I booted the Mac Pro off a Win98 CD with no CD-Rom support and hooked a small FAT16 formatted ATA HD to the Slave ATA port. Once it booted into DOS, I had access to the ATA HD as the C: drive, so I could backup the old rom and re-flash with PC version which I copied onto it earlier.

All in all, a very successful night!

Speedys123
 
speedys123 said:
After that, I took my Apple first gen Mac Pro 8800GT and reflashed it using the PC version of Nvidia 8800gt bios
Speedys123
Click to expand...

Glad this worked for you, but to all who read and follow....absolutely no need to do this.

With exception of 1900XT, All Mac Pro cards carry a PC BIOS. (otherwise you would not have been able to boot into DOS.....think about it)

So, when you wish to retire a Mac Pro card to a PC...simply plug it in, and boot up. Add latest drivers and you are good. If you ever need it as a Mac card again, just plop back in Mac Pro and it will work there too.
 
jeanlin, I think maybe 4890 failed with new aty_init because of problems with reading bios from card, I saw such problems with 2 4870 cards on pc.
So i updates aty_init and added fallback to using bin_image from plist to initialize a card, if reading biso from card failed, kext there - http://netkas.org/?p=104

===========

Btw, I added nvidia support to aty_init, with all latest gt200/gt200b chips. New game when we can get quadro 4800 drivers :D
 
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