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

The Rominator said:
If you create a ROM for your 4870 or 4890 from it's original PC BIOS, here is a piece of advice that can save you some frustrating hours.

Use "hexedit" to do a search. Look for the characters "MCUC". Be sure to click the "ASCII" button.

The string should show up twice, first time in the PC BIOS, just a few bytes after address for GDDR5 table.

The second time is the open for the GDDR5 table. If "MCUC" only shows up once, you have overwritten the begining of GDDR5 table and are doomed for failure.....DON'T FLASH IT.

Post here and I can help if I have time. Or maybe someone else will come by.
Click to expand...

Hi The Rominator,

I 've checked my EFIROM for Sapphire HD Radeon 4890 New Version and found 2 "MCuC".

I've compared also 3 roms, my EFIROM (hyb.rom), The original rom of the same card (original.rom), and Netkas ROM (netkas.rom), you'll find here attached the results, in blue is the end of the original bios, in red is the beginning of EFI part, and in brown the end of EFI part.
Netkas ROM bios (from MSI) is a bit longer than mine, so bios doesn't finish at the same place.
EFI on mine starts next line after bios end, EFI on Netkas has left 15 lines between bios and EFI.
but for mine 1F8B0 - F800= 65 712 (dec)
and for Netkas 1FAB0 - FA00 = 65 712 (dec) so EFI starts with the same value, finishs with the same value and have the same length on both rom.
My card work very well on PC and on Hackintosh, but not on Mac Pro :(

http://yfrog.com/0lromsej
 
Peloche said:
Hi The Rominator,

I 've checked my EFIROM for Sapphire HD Radeon 4890 New Version and found 2 "MCuC".

I've compared also 3 roms, my EFIROM (hyb.rom), The original rom of the same card (original.rom), and Netkas ROM (netkas.rom), you'll find here attached the results, in blue is the end of the original bios, in red is the beginning of EFI part, and in brown the end of EFI part.
Netkas ROM bios (from MSI) is a bit longer than mine, so bios doesn't finish at the same place.
EFI on mine starts next line after bios end, EFI on Netkas has left 15 lines between bios and EFI.
but for mine 1F8B0 - F800= 65 712 (dec)
and for Netkas 1FAB0 - FA00 = 65 712 (dec) so EFI starts with the same value, finishs with the same value and have the same length on both rom.
My card work very well on PC and on Hackintosh, but not on Mac Pro :(

http://yfrog.com/0lromsej
Click to expand...

Hmm...hard to tell from those shots, but it looks OK.

Everything I know how to do with these ROMs can be figured out from the ROMs posted above, the one that came on the Saphire 4870, the one that the guys had made that contained the placement error, and the one I posted with the error fixed. (that works)

Do a Hexedit compare on them and see what I did.

In addition to reinstalling the GDDR5 table in it's entirety, I also changed the address it is lised at in the PC BIOS. (look about 10 bytes before first "MCUC")

DO all those things, make sure it is still exactly 128Kb in length, and then run the Fixrom.py on it.

I have a guest coming for the weekend and won't be able to spend time on ROMs til monday...but seriously, comparing the 3 roms for the Saphire I fixed for ZVON et al can show you all the tricks I did.

FWIW, I tried to do a ROM for a troublesome XFX 4890 in another thread for a trkkie guy, and despite my best efforts he still got screen corruption. There may be some memory or speed init strings in EFI part tat need to be close to the actual card and as cards get more different, the EFI fails. (just a guess, but we are certainly having more trouble with ROMs than in "early days" of spring, despite SL greater tolerance)
 
The Rominator said:
Hmm...hard to tell from those shots, but it looks OK.
Click to expand...

Just in case your guest will be late :rolleyes:, here attached my EFI ROM.

SANEQEFI stands for "Sapphire New Edition Qimonda EFI".

If we make it to work it should be great since it's widely available now.

Good luck,

Peloche,

Edit: SANEQEFI is for 4890
 

Attachments

  • SANEQEFI.rom.zip
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Cindori said:
Crossfire is disabled on Apple cards, you need a PC flashed card.
Click to expand...

Thats what I was seeing, I had tried a reverse procedure of using other roms injected with the efi part (pipomolo method) and flashed the Apple cards.. was no joy. Seems the crippled oem rom will have to stay.
 
d1sahib said:
Thank you Rominator. That worked very well. :)

To answer one of your questions in Post #2000, I rebooted and the power message went away by itself within a minute.

For others who may want to try this, here is the procedure I followed (thanks to Alexandre Boeglin for providing an easy way to flash the card from within OS X):

- Downloaded and extracted the firmware file by Rominator (Post #1995)

- Downloaded the two files (iMac Graphics Update and Pacifist) as detailed in the Boeglin method (http://boeglin.org/blog/comments.php?y=09&m=09&entry=entry090918-031702).

- Using Pacifist, extracted the two files (ATIROMFlasher.kext and ATIFacelessFlash.app) to my home folder (~).

- Fixed the authentication errors.

- Erased the old iMac firmware as suggested in Boeglin's notes.

- Copied the firmware file (saph487X.ROM) to the flash utility.

- Installed the card in slot 1, moved the existing GT120 to slot 3.

- Connected the power cables (bought from the ATI store).

- Booted and ran the flash utilities.

- Connected a monitor (Dell 2405FPW) to the 4870 and rebooted.

As mentioned in other posts also, a warning pops up every time your Mac is rebooted, but is goes away if you do nothing.

Many thanks to all; this would not been possible without your dedication and perseverance.
Click to expand...

Hello all. I followed the same procedure quoted above with one exception, I used an older rom (the one quoted wasn't available at the time). My problem is that I get the cpub fail issue when it is plugged into the computer. Black screen, no boot. I tried using the Natit app but it didn't work either.

From what I gather from this thread (it is long and I am a newb) I need to get my hands on a PC with an empty PCI express slot and a PCI video card so that I can re-flash this thing. Is this the case? If so, I have no PC to use. Is there some other method I could try?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Specs:
MacPro 1,1 (bought early 2007)
existing card is NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
new card is Sapphire HD 4870 512 GDDR5
 
thats just a reference image, not pic of actual card.
dont think there are any ATI PC 4870 that arent branded (HIS, XFX, Asus etc)
 
The guy writes it is from ATI himself. I hope he is telling the truth. ;)

So can I flash an original Apple ROM on it? :) Will second DVI port and s-video port work too, although the Apple card has only one DVI port and a mini displayport?
 
Does anyone have a copy or link to "Jabberwalky's ROM" for a 512GB Sapphire 4870 p/n 288-10E85-030SA?

I tried to search through this thread but it is extremely long, and browsing Jabberwalky's posts did not seem to help.
 
4870 2Gb

hi all, first Im sorry for me english... no is really good.

I buy for error Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 2 GB Vapor-X ... change the graphic card is little dificult..
I down a rom from netkas and use on me 4870 2Gb but I have black screen....
Im really angry with Apple, I pay to buy me MacPro 1.1 and now "its Sux" with graphic cards...

Today I down a bios from this threat and try again... I make and restart macpro 1.1 and yes! I can use me 4870 2Gb with Snow Leopard but have "big" problems..
1: I cant use 4870 in Slot 1.. for the heatsink.. its really big.
2: I use in the slot 3 x1 and nvidia 7300 in slot 1 x16.
I can use 4870 2Gb in Snow Leopard but I look in the profile system and Snow Leopard look a graphic card with 1Gb (I think its for the rom from this threat).
I look small graphics bugs on the screen (I think its the problem for the memory.. only detected 1Gb)..

I try use game wow but the game is locked.
I dont know to edit rom and make changes to try use 4870. I use rom
saph487x.rom

Any little help? or I can throw the card to the trash?

I try use this card with windows on bootcamp but I cant install the catalyst.

Thanks to all.

I attach the original rom Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 2 GB Vapor-X
 

Attachments

  • RV770.zip
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Do all 4870's give the power cable warning at bootup? I haven't bought one yet and am trying to decide which one. Having trouble finding one that is still available to buy that has been tested. I'm looking at Sapphire Vapor-X 1GB, part 100267L. Any advice appreciated.
 
I pulled the card back out and took some shots of it. This is the Sapphire Radeon 4870 1 gb that I posted the original rom for a while back. This is the card that Rominator fixed up the rom for.
 

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One more Q, sorry if OT...still not sure if I have correct ROM for my Sapphire 512 4870 card. Problem I run into is whenever I run Sims 3 with flashed 4870 it will not display correctly, mouse arrow comes up but background is completely black. All else (in OS X) seems ok tho. When I run same with flashed 8800, Sims 3 runs fine. Could this be an incompatible ROM issue, or is there some sort of problem with Sims 3 and 4870?

Running on 2006 MacPro 1,1. Also I run 3 displays, 4870 or 8800 as main (30" ACD), and then I have the original 7300 running the 2 side displays (23" ACD's).
 
I bought a XFX-HD-487A-ZWFL card yesterday and I installed it in my Snow Leopard 10.6.1 (Mac Pro 1.1). I booted into Windows XP with Bootcamp and flashed with the ROM in the below package:

http://krull.se/macpro/ZWFCFlash.zip

I flashed it with WinFlash and it worked pretty good. As reported elsewhere in this forum I have problems with my monitor output, I have to switch between the different DVI outputs to get it working. Booting to Windows XP works perfect though. I also get the warning about the power cable.

Now, I thought that I could maybe create my own ROM, so I started to search for the original Holy Grail XFX ROM and couldn't find it. So, if anyone can point my in some right directions I'd be more than happy to try creating a working ROM for the ZWFL card.

Thanks in advance
 

Attachments

  • RV770.zip
    45.9 KB · Views: 100
If you are having issues in OSX, I imagine you are running Leopard.

Snow Leopard works pretty well on these cards.

Good luck improving the ROM.

The big issue is that the card has physically changed from the ZHFC/ZHDC "easy flash" cards.

The ROM I did for ZWFL/FC uses same method and means as the working ZHFC ROM, so you would need to really get into the down & dirty ROM writing to fix it. (ie...not a simple technical error....ROM would need to be re-written)
 
Hi Rominator,

I'm afraid that I am running Snow Leopard. I have two different hard drives, one with a Snow Leopard installation which I've upgraded from Leopard, and one clean Snow Leopard install. In both of them I'm experiencing the same problem.

I don't know if it's the issue here, but I have an old CRT monitor attached via a DVI -> VGA adapter. Maybe it's that which is causing the problems? I'll try to run some tests with a monitor with a DVI input later tonight or tomorrow.

I really do appreciate all the help that you and others are willing to give on this issue, it always blows my mind away when there's people around the net helping people like me. Thanks.
 
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