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

The Rominator said:
I have same MP firmware.

Please post info about card...you DO have 2 power cables plugged into it, yes?

Also, if you can get the board number from the screen I posted (flashing screen)
Click to expand...

Yes I had both power cables plugged in. I'm using the ones from the motherboard, using the real cables I had with my 8800GT and x1900 XT.

I'll check again but I'm pretty sure it all looked identical, I did compare it to your picture.

And I'm curious, when you flash yours with this flash, does it still work in a PC? Or did you not flash it from a PC? I used a different PC I had to flash it.
After I flash it with the Apple ROM, it no longer works at all in the PC. Maybe this is normal, but other Apple cards I've had I've been able to use in a PC after a flash.
 
woot! it works!!

i am SO f'n grateful to all of you for your help!!!!

now i can switch back and forth and use my computer like it was meant to be used!!! no more switching hardware!!!

i had the original 1st gen 4870, but now it is so the brand new mac/pc version!!! a month before it comes out!!!

hell yes. y'all rock. PEACE!!!
 
Gone for a day and the world leaves you behind. :eek:

I've got a visiontek 512mb 4870 I can take out of commission from my crossfire setup. What's the accepted rom flashing procedure?
 
tobyg said:
Tried a Sapphire 512MB video card (not the one linked above).

Doesn't work so far. My Mac Pro chimes over and over every second or so. Never sends a signal out either of the DVI ports. Going to try resetting SMC/PRAM....

Verified flash/checksum. 0x5496 is my checksum, which is what it should be.

Not sure yet...

I do have one of the original Mac Pro 1,1 2x2.66ghz machines right now, so maybe that's related.. but the Rominator said he got his working on a 1,1 Mac Pro. I do know there is a newer firmware out there on some Mac Pro 1,1 motherboards.
My firmware on my motherboard is MP11.005C.B08.
Click to expand...

I'd really be interested to know which version of the Sapphire HD 4870 you used. We have one report of success with a "1st gen" version of that card. I have here right now what I think is a 2nd gen version of the Sapphire HD 4870. I am assuming this from the part number on the box, which in my case begins with "288-". I believe that "188-" is the 1st gen version.

I am very tempted to try flashing this ROM but I don't want to kill it, either. I read elsewhere online that you can re-flash a broken card if you boot with a 2nd video card in your PC (so that you can run WinFlash or ATI Flash from DOS) and re-flash with the PC ROM, so I am a little bit comforted that if something goes wrong, I can still recover.

Could you please post the first 3 or possibly even the first 8 digits of the part number on your card that didn't work with the ROM?

And, for those of you that DO get it to work, would you please give detailed information about your card, including part of the serial number if possible?
 
Sapphire HD4870 512M GDDR5 PCI-E DUAL DVI-I/TVO
PN 188-01E85-001SA
Also says PN# 100247L

Just did some more testing.

Resetting the SMC/PRAM did nothing.
Unplugged the mac for a minute, plugged back in, same thing.

When I hit the power button, button lights up and everything starts coming to life normally.
Then after about 5 seconds or so I get a chime, and then after that chime the CPUB FAIL light inside the memory compartment lights. And then it just continuously chimes.

CPUB is fine. Put my nVidia 8800 GT back in and all is fine. All cores working, CPU's are fine. The machine has never given me a problem, so I really doubt its the machine.

Very odd.
 
Thanks tobyg.

So it would appear that yours (assuming my theory on part numbers is correct) is a 1st gen card.

To flash or not to flash... hmm....

I think I will still wait a bit until we get other success reports and have a few more details about the cards. I'm too chicken to jump in myself. :eek:
 
mackmack said:
Gone for a day and the world leaves you behind. :eek:

I've got a visiontek 512mb 4870 I can take out of commission from my crossfire setup. What's the accepted rom flashing procedure?
Click to expand...

netkas kindly posted a link to a HOWTO on page 8 of this thread. I'd follow that procedure.
 
tobyg said:
Sapphire HD4870 512M GDDR5 PCI-E DUAL DVI-I/TVO
PN 188-01E85-001SA
Also says PN# 100247L

Just did some more testing.

Resetting the SMC/PRAM did nothing.
Unplugged the mac for a minute, plugged back in, same thing.

When I hit the power button, button lights up and everything starts coming to life normally.
Then after about 5 seconds or so I get a chime, and then after that chime the CPUB FAIL light inside the memory compartment lights. And then it just continuously chimes.

CPUB is fine. Put my nVidia 8800 GT back in and all is fine. All cores working, CPU's are fine. The machine has never given me a problem, so I really doubt its the machine.

Very odd.
Click to expand...

CPUB diagnostic light also indicates PCI card failures.
 
For reference, here are my card info:

P/N : 102-B50701-10-AT
SKU : 21133-00-20R

I bought it whithin the first weeks after the 4870 was released, and all cards sold at that time were using ATI's reference design.

Only months later, third party manufacturers started to sell their own designs.

Probably the solution here is :

* start with the PC from for this card
* save the GDDR5 table
* build a "mac like" rom : PC rom + EFI rom + GDDR5 table
* the hard part : relocate GDDR5 table in the PC rom and the EFI rom to the new address of the GDDR5 table

Then, it might also completely fail because of incompatibilities between the PC and EFI roms
 
OK, thanks for that info pipomolo42.

I bought my 4870 only last week (before I even thought about the possibility that flashing the ROM might work.) I am beginning to wonder whether only those with early 4870 cards are going to be able to get this to work.
 
tobyg said:
Sapphire HD4870 512M GDDR5 PCI-E DUAL DVI-I/TVO
PN 188-01E85-001SA
Also says PN# 100247L

Just did some more testing.

Resetting the SMC/PRAM did nothing.
Unplugged the mac for a minute, plugged back in, same thing.

When I hit the power button, button lights up and everything starts coming to life normally.
Then after about 5 seconds or so I get a chime, and then after that chime the CPUB FAIL light inside the memory compartment lights. And then it just continuously chimes.

CPUB is fine. Put my nVidia 8800 GT back in and all is fine. All cores working, CPU's are fine. The machine has never given me a problem, so I really doubt its the machine.

Very odd.
Click to expand...

Ok I busted out the MP 2x2.8ghz Octo I just got and... same thing.

So it's not a MacPro1,1 issue I'm having. This board just looks like it may not work for some reason.

I have reflashed with the original firmware and put it back in my Vista PC and Vista is back up and running with this card just fine.

I'm not done messing with it yet, but so far things aren't looking good.

More info:

I reflashed this card back to the stock rom and just FYI, here is what the output of an 'atlflash -ai' looks like

Code: 
	Adapter 0		(BN=01, DN=00, PCIID=94401002, SSID=0502174B)
		ASIC Family		 :  RV770/M98
		Flash Type		 :  PM25LV010	(128 KB)
		Product Name		 :  RV770XT 512M GDDR5 2DVI TVO
		Bios Config File	 :  1E8501SA.002
		Bios P/N		 :  11X-1E8501SA-00
		Bios Version		 :  011.010.000.002.029896
		Bios Date		 :  09/08/08 06:32
I flashed by running: (renamed 4870.rom to appl4870.rom)
Code: 
atiflash -p -fs -fp 0 appl4870.rom
Old SSID: 0502
New SSID: 00B2
Old P/N: 11X-1E8501SA-001
New P/N: 113-B77101-012
Old DeviceID: 9440
New DeviceID: 9440
Old Product Name: RV770XT 512M GDDR5 2DVI TVO
New Product Name: Wekiva RV770 B77101 Board
Old BIOS Version: 011.010.000.002.029896
New BIOS Version: 011.017.000.018.031480
Flash type: PM25LV010
20000/20000h bytes programmed
20000/20000h bytes verified
Then I ran atiflash -ai (After flashing with appl4870.rom)
Code: 
	Adapter 0		(BN=01, DN=00, PCIID=94401002, SSID=0502174B)
		ASIC Family		 :  RV770/M98
		Flash Type		 :  PM25LV010	(128 KB)
		Product Name		 :  Wekiva RV770 B77101 Board
		Bios Config File	 :  S3B77101.012
		Bios P/N		 :  113-B77101-012
		Bios Version		 :  011.017.000.018.031480
		Bios Date		 :  01/06/09 16:27

I manually typed all of this so there may be a typo somewhere.
 
Tried it half an hour ago on my Sapphire, in regular PC, flashed fine but upon reboot I get nothing from both ports. DVI, VGA, it's all dark. Shame, it was solid card...
 
v0n said:
Tried it half an hour ago on my Sapphire, in regular PC, flashed fine but upon reboot I get nothing from both ports. DVI, VGA, it's all dark. Shame, it was solid card...
Click to expand...

You can fix it, but you'll need another video card to fix it. It's not terribly hard to fix, I've fixed mine a few times already :)
 
FWIW...if you set machine up to boot into DOS....you can memorize the keystrokes needed to run ATIFlash.

For instance, I need to hit "Return" then "2" in FreeDOS menu before it hits Command Prompt.

Then a "C:" to change to C Drive where atiflash is.

Once you have this all figured out...can be a fun mind game to try to get card back.

Or just slap in another card.

Usually best to use an ATI card to flash Nvidia and vice versa...avoids pitfalls and bother of multi cards.
 
Ok, so it looks like we should search some "old" 4870 on ebay, right? Any hint how to identify them?

Ron
 
Here's the last thing it displayed:
atiflash.jpg


So, is it this particular card that's incompatible, or is it a case of resolution in that rom preset too high or something? My "bricked" 4870 behaves like it was booting fine but monitor couldn't display what's on the screen.

Happy to hear it's recoverable, will need go pop out and buy cheapest pcie card, I'm slightly scared to insert mac pro's 2600 into that PC just in case atiflash brick both)
 
v0n, that looks like the identical card I'm still fighting with right now.

I'm not getting very far.

When I 'brick' mine, I'm not even able to boot. No video, no post. It won't even 'beep' when booting.

I have to use a PCI card to boot from, and then re-flash.
 
The Rominator said:
FWIW...if you set machine up to boot into DOS....you can memorize the keystrokes needed to run ATIFlash.

For instance, I need to hit "Return" then "2" in FreeDOS menu before it hits Command Prompt.

Then a "C:" to change to C Drive where atiflash is.

Once you have this all figured out...can be a fun mind game to try to get card back.

Or just slap in another card.

Usually best to use an ATI card to flash Nvidia and vice versa...avoids pitfalls and bother of multi cards.
Click to expand...

What atiflash version did you use? I'm using 3.60 downloaded from techpowerup.
 
What are you restoring it with, bin dump from GPU-Z? Yeah, 3.60 from techpowerup....
 
v0n said:
What are you restoring it with, bin dump from GPU-Z? Yeah, 3.60 from techpowerup....
Click to expand...

Restoring with the backup I made before I started hacking at it.

PM me your email address and I'll email you the rom file.

Is yours a Sapphire card? Same one I mentioned earlier in this thread? If so, I can send you my ROM that I backed up.
 
jeanlain said:
Replacing the BIOS part with that of the original card should bring a fully functional card under windows (it's a PC card after all). Under Mac OS, still no VGA though, but you should not experience the problems that affect hackintoshes, since you keep the EFI part.

One question: if you use the Mac ROM, will this solve your problems on hackintoshes (non-functional upper port)?
Click to expand...

OSX drivers uses atombios functionality, which is located in bios part of rom.

so, doing what you want to do will make card work in windows, but in osx, only one port will work.
 
netkas said:
OSX drivers uses atombios functionality, which is located in bios part of rom.

so, doing what you want to do will make card work in windows, but in osx, only one port will work.
Click to expand...

I have tried to move just the BIOS part into Mac ROM but that didn't work well.

Perhaps I should just move the EFI part into PC BIOS?

Are there identifier strings for EFI? Standard markers for begining and end?
 
The Rominator said:
I have tried to move just the BIOS part into Mac ROM but that didn't work well.

Perhaps I should just move the EFI part into PC BIOS?

Are there identifier strings for EFI? Standard markers for begining and end?
Click to expand...

If you want to go this way, you can start by looking at those:
- BIOS Boot Specification http://www.phoenix.com/NR/rdonlyres/56E38DE2-3E6F-4743-835F-B4A53726ABED/0/specsbbs101.pdf
- Plug and Play BIOS Specification: http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/pnpbiosspecificationv10a.pdf

Then what you also have to take care of is the "last rom indicator" byte (octet 0x15 of the PCIR structure). Its value should be 0x80 only for the last OpROM, so for instance, when you create a rom image using pc bios + efi part of mac bios, you have to set it to 0x00 on the pc bios part, ot the system won't even bother to read the efi part.

And of course, you need to fix the checksum of the pc bios part after this modification.

edit : here is a small script that can help you fix the rom, but it might be adapted to cards that embeed raw data outside of OpROMs (probably needs another class for raw data, that just acts as a passthrough) : http://pastebin.com/f43d4c183
 
pipomolo42 said:
Then what you also have to take care of is the "last rom indicator" byte (octet 0x15 of the PCIR structure). Its value should be 0x80 only for the last OpROM, so for instance, when you create a rom image using pc bios + efi part of mac bios, you have to set it to 0x00 on the pc bios part, ot the system won't even bother to read the efi part.
Click to expand...

Lost me here....

Have a look at Mac 4870 and let me know where this is...I see D8 80 in last line of Mac EFI I think...is this what you mean?

Oddly enough, the PC BIOS from my Diamond 4870 doesn't have this that I can find.
 
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