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

[MacVidCards]

Yes, I have seen same error from that card.

Would not flash in DOS in Mac Pro.

Putting in a Windows PC running DOS it flashed easily. Don't know how or why.

There are 2 different Asus 1 Gig cards being sold.

The primary difference being the shape of heatsink near power connectors. One of them is straight line, the other has additional little sections coming off of it to connect with a couple other MOSFETS.

Irritatingly, the two different cards require 2 different ROMs. Also, ASUS has once again written a ROM with a big chunk of space in it near end with some little Asus Only stub. Makes ROM longer than it needs to be, and harder to write Mac version. I found that a Saphire 4870 1 Gig ROM I had lying around actually works pretty well on car that Leonid's ROM didn't work for. Only problem is the fan runs a little loud.

And there is one other piece of bad news. In 10.6.3 the cards will show boot screen but go BLANK after...UNLESS you do 1 of 3 things:

1. Install Cindori's Dual DVI patch
2. Attach DVI to VGA adapter on unused port
3. Run Dual DVIs.

With any luck 10.6.4 will fix this silly issue.

Good news is, unlike MOST 4870/90 cards out now, there is NO Power Cable warning.

But first step is going to be getting it flashed. Got a PC or a friend with one?

EDIT: Just reread where yak told his story. In his excitement, he never did tell what he changed to make flash work. Hopefully there is just a command in or revision of ATIflash that worked. Why not try PM or emailing him?

Also, could you zip and attach your Asus Rom?

 

[SpyderWeiss]

Yes, I have seen same error from that card.

Would not flash in DOS in Mac Pro.

Putting in a Windows PC running DOS it flashed easily. Don't know how or why.

There are 2 different Asus 1 Gig cards being sold.

The primary difference being the shape of heatsink near power connectors. One of them is straight line, the other has additional little sections coming off of it to connect with a couple other MOSFETS.

Irritatingly, the two different cards require 2 different ROMs. Also, ASUS has once again written a ROM with a big chunk of space in it near end with some little Asus Only stub. Makes ROM longer than it needs to be, and harder to write Mac version. I found that a Saphire 4870 1 Gig ROM I had lying around actually works pretty well on car that Leonid's ROM didn't work for. Only problem is the fan runs a little loud.

And there is one other piece of bad news. In 10.6.3 the cards will show boot screen but go BLANK after...UNLESS you do 1 of 3 things:

1. Install Cindori's Dual DVI patch
2. Attach DVI to VGA adapter on unused port
3. Run Dual DVIs.

With any luck 10.6.4 will fix this silly issue.

Good news is, unlike MOST 4870/90 cards out now, there is NO Power Cable warning.

But first step is going to be getting it flashed. Got a PC or a friend with one?

EDIT: Just reread where yak told his story. In his excitement, he never did tell what he changed to make flash work. Hopefully there is just a command in or revision of ATIflash that worked. Why not try PM or emailing him?

Also, could you zip and attach your Asus Rom?

Thanks for the reply Rominator. I do have a friend with a PC, I'll see if he has some time today. In the meantime, I have the one that has additional little sections coming off of it to connect with a couple other MOSFETS.

I plan on running dual DVI (one to my computer monitor, and the other to my tv) so that's not a problem for me.

I'd email yak, but he doesn't have an email address listed in his profile.

I uploaded the original rom file, it should be a couple posts up before this one attached below one of my messages, it's called RV770original.zip. Anything you can do to help out would be much appreciated.

Also, after reading Cindori's hackintosh story, I'm tempted to try that out. I have a question though, do you still need to flash the card to get it to work in a hackintosh? Or is there another workaround?

 

[maro2010]

Thanks to all the friends around this forum I have succeeded flashing 4870 card. It is running well so far. No warning and sleeps OK.

I got the used card and 6pin cables from auction.
It wasn't in a box or with any manuals but it says P/N7120777000G on the fan box.
I have tried some uploaded ROMs first but didn't work. So I made a ROM following the instruction here. I booted Mac Pro from DOS CD and move to Bootcamp directory then flashed with ATIflash command.

Actually this was my second attempt(second card). First one from Sapphire with Zalman fan, I screwed it flashing with Zeus for unknow reason. With the bad card Mac Pro won't boot(not with OS X, Windows nor DOS) so I can't recover it by reflashing. Anyone with solution for that?

Attaching ROM I made and original one in case someone wants them.

 

[Flint2525]

Flash Succeeded

Hi All

Firstly thanks to everyone that made this possible i just saved over £150 and got a extra 512mb of ram.

I spent about 12 hours reading all this thread and groths blog the golden rule and various info the the web, it then took me 3 hours and bang it works.

MP1,1 2006 7gb Ram

Thank you all

I first thought i had a broken gxf card but found out today it was my Hp 30" screen.

My card was the HD-487A-ZWFL made in china version C.0 1GB bought in the UK, for £100 plus 2 power cables from ebay £10.99 each cheapest around unless i wanted to wait for them to be shipped from the USA at £7 each.

My rom is attached but it the one from this site i used any way and the one from groths.org the golden rule Small collection of roms. I found that Zeus would not work for me natit and flashing also.

So i tried the ati flash tool also from groths.org.

1,installed natit from ati flash
2,turn of and inserted 4870
3,booted up a couple of time eventually found that only the background was available and right click work no comands or anything could only create new folder and get info and that shot off the screen as if i was missing real estate.
3.5, zapped the pram dont know if this helped but!!
4, booted back up with old 7300gt in slot 2 just above the 4870 worked.
5, zeus again would not flash the rom so used ati worked.
6, rebooted with 4870 all good tried zeus and it worked so flashed it again and rebooted.
7, uninstalled natit on both ati flash and zeus and rebooted again all working very happy.


I must say a few times in between 2 and 4 and got kernal panics and BSOD hangs i just turned off and pulled the power cables from the 4870 so although the fan spun the card did not show up in system profiler. when i had it running off the 7300gt i just carefully put the power cables back in and flashed the card, rebooted.

I do get the error message about power cables i can live with that either click ok or leave it as it goes in about 10 sec and does not effect anything acording to all the info on here.

I have looked in S/profiller and i have a duplicate 4870 there see image

weird but ha it all works and i i start to read more further down the line im sure both of them issues will be sorted and i might even have a go a building my own rom.

Thanks to all posters and contributors esp Cindori and The Rominator and a big FU to apple for trying to rip us applets off.

 

[andfx]

Flashed 4870 1GB disabled!!

After the 10.6.4 os update the 4870 flashed card is still recognized by the system BUT all the graphics features are disabled (ie: core graphic, open gl)
and even moving a window became frustrating

I had to bring back my old x1900 and all works fine now.....at least!

I think that some .kext have been changed in the system extensions just to avoid the use of flashed cards.

My thought is that all the card with power cord alert should be affected by this.

Hope someone will find the rigth trick again!!! plz!!

I have a MacPro 8 core 3ghz 2007 and the card is a 4870 1Gb sapphire-

 

[ammon]

After the 10.6.4 os update the 4870 flashed card is still recognized by the system BUT all the graphics features are disabled (ie: core graphic, open gl)
and even moving a window became frustrating

I had to bring back my old x1900 and all works fine now.....at least!

I think that some .kext have been changed in the system extensions just to avoid the use of flashed cards.

My thought is that all the card with power cord alert should be affected by this.

Hope someone will find the rigth trick again!!! plz!!

I have a MacPro 8 core 3ghz 2007 and the card is a 4870 1Gb sapphire-

I have an XFX card with the power cord alert, and exact same issue too. And I too had to go back to my x1900! (glad I didn't try selling it!!!)

I tried using the 10.6.2 kext files (that worked for 10.6.3), but no luck with 10.6.4...

 

[TheStrudel]

My Sapphire's still trucking, working as well as it always has since Snow Leopard's first release.

 

[MacVidCards]

Would it be paranoia to think that Apple did this on purpose?

Snow Leopard brought better support for flashed 4870s, right through 10.6.2 but last two updates have brought nothing but pain.

As I have been saying for at least a year now, your best bet with these cards are the ones that most closely follow original reference design.

I'm going to try one of the Magic XFX 4870 1 Gigs. They were the ONLY 1 Gig cards that had working Dual Display in Leopard. I'll bet it still works fine.

Very odd though. Apple actually IMPROVED the 7800GS AGP after myself and some others wrote original Mac ROM. Leopard made the card work better than Tiger had allowed. Would be very unfortunate if Apple has a new policy to derail flashing. Especially as they frequently quit selling cards YERS before demand runs out.

If there were no flashing, imagine how high the prices of 8800GTs, etc would be? (WeLoveMacs sells NEW Old STock OEM 8800GTs for $799 while Mac-Pro.com has them for a much more reasonable $300)

 

[blunderbus]

Update on 10.6.4 and my 4870

I originally flashed my card a while back with Rominator's help, and was happily buzzing along since. 10.6.4 came out and broke a few things. After I played with a few kexts, I got QE/CI back. All I ended up doing was rolling back the ATIX2000 files to 10.6.3 versions, specifically:

ATIRadeonX2000.kext
ATIRadeonX2000GA.plugin
ATIRadeonX2000GLDriver.bundle
ATIRadeonX2000VADriver.bundle

I kept the Following kexts at 10.6.4:

ATI4800controller.kext
ATIFrameBuffer.kext
ATISupport.kext

I made no other modifications nor added any additional kexts or hacks. Make sure you get permissions right or use a kext tool (such as Kext Helper) to install these kexts. After I rolled these back, I got QE/CI back. The one issue I was still having was poor OpenGL performance in games. I wandered across a fix for this by accident. Just put your system to sleep once after a restart, and the OpenGL performance returns to normal. Ive used sleep in the past to get my 30 inch ACD to snap out of a black screen where it doesnt pick up as the main display.

I am no kext or Rom wizard, so I have no idea why things are behaving like they are. I just thought Id post my process of elimination and what has been working for now in the near term. Id be happy to post more info if needed. Thanks all for keeping the flashing scene vibrant.

Thanks much Rominator. Worked like a charm. There is a power cable warning like was stated earlier, but so far working with dual link on a 30 inch ACD.

To rehash:

Sapphire HD4870 1 GB GDDR5
PN 100259-1GL
SKU# 11133-19-20R

Working Rom for this card is attached.

Issues: When booting with 30 inch ACD connected, the monitor will not turn on when attempting to display the desktop. The DVI on the display needs to be unplugged and plugged back in to be detected and become the primary display. There is also a power cable warning on boot up, but does not seem to affect anything.

 

[MacVidCards]

I am no kext or Rom wizard, so I have no idea why things are behaving like they are. I just thought Id post my process of elimination and what has been working for now in the near term. Id be happy to post more info if needed. Thanks all for keeping the flashing scene vibrant.

Thanks for coming back to post a fix.

Sorry that the "Power Cable Warning" cards are becoming more trouble.

We can always hope that 10.6.5 isn't the fuster cluck that the last two were.

There is a good chance that using parts of the 4890 fix packages would fix 4870 issues as well. The only way we learn is when people post.

 

[SinisterJoe]

I just flashed one of the XFX 4870 ZWFC cards into a MP 1.1 using a ROM I found in this thread.

Ordered from Tiger Direct via eBay, bought the proper power cables off eBay.

Flashing method: FreeDOS live CD. I made a small FAT partition on my HD to avoid the trouble of making a custom ISO. Kept the 7300GT in during the Flash in slot 2 with the 4870 in slot 1.

Issues: On a stock 10.6.4 install dual DVI did not work on boot. If I plugged in the second DVI post-boot it did work. I installed the dualdvi fix which solved that problem but QE/CI were broken. So I installed the 10.6.3 exotic cards fix. Also, as suggested, I reverted to the ATI2000* kexts found in the 10.6.3 combo update. All said and done QE/CI and dual DVI on boot now works. So I'm not really sure what fixed what but it's a happy ending and that's good enough for me.

I was a bit concerned looking at the card that the fan would be really loud but it's not bad at all. Can't even hear it with my MP under my desk.

 

[rhubschmid]

kernel panics

Hi guys

its my first post here. I'm roger from Switzerland 35 years old.
And i need your help advice.
I have a MP 1,1 with a 7300GT in in and it's so low. so i decided to buy a sapphire 4870 with 512MB Ram (PN: 288-10E85-030SA).

i tried pipomolos way to build a custom Rom (NewPC4870.rom) out of the mac rom i found on the net (Mac4870.rom) and the extracted original Card rom (original-PC.rom) --> see attachment

Flashed it with the BootCD under dos and the flashing worked good.
Also the card works under windows (bootccamp).

But now when booting parallel with my monitor attached to the 7300GT, the apple logo shows at startup, but the i get the kernel panic! --> included in the attachement.

also when i install only the 4870 i get the panic.

i don't know what i did wrong.
hope anyone can help me, thanks a lot

Roger

PS: excuse me if i could not read through the entire post

 

[666sheep]

Hi Roger,
If your card looks exactly like that:

(red PCB and AMD sign above PCI connector)
there is no need to create custom ROM for this card. It's reference PCB 4870 and you should flash it with original Mac ROM, which youll find in this thread (page 8 or near, i don't remember precisely).
If it's blue PCB and reference cooler, also try non modified ROM with it.

 

[emoseman]

HD-487A-ZWFC Ver G.1 Can't get working

I've read just about everything I can find to try to get this to work.

I'm running 10.5.8 and I'm trying to the card listed in the title flashed and working. I've used Zeus and loaded modified and unmodified roms and the card isn't getting recognized by the OS.

If I install Natit the computer grey screens on boot and I'm forced to hard reboot.

Is this card flashable?

I'm also getting the error message from Zeus:
Flash Aborted! Possible reasons:
ROM Already identical to card firmware
Card not compatible with ROM or Zeus

Any help is greatly appreciated!

--
Evan

 

[rhubschmid]

Hi 666sheep

my card looks like the attached pictures.
i tried the rom i found somewhere here on one of the eralier posts
flashed it with the original rom, but gray screen and kerne panic --> hard reeboot.
so i tried pipomolo42 way and created a custom rom --> same thing, gray screen

I'm running 10.6.4 by the way and did nothing expect the flashing of the rom (as i understood i do not to need to do any OS X modifications such a separate driver installation)

thanks for further help

Roger

 

[MacVidCards]

I've read just about everything I can find to try to get this to work.

I'm running 10.5.8 and I'm trying to the card listed in the title flashed and working. I've used Zeus and loaded modified and unmodified roms and the card isn't getting recognized by the OS.

If I install Natit the computer grey screens on boot and I'm forced to hard reboot.

Is this card flashable?

I'm also getting the error message from Zeus:
Flash Aborted! Possible reasons:
ROM Already identical to card firmware
Card not compatible with ROM or Zeus

Any help is greatly appreciated!

--
Evan

The ZWxx cards are vastly inferior to the earlier XFX 4870 cards. Cheaper fan, cheaper components, and 15-20% slower.

Also, while the early XFX 4870 1 Gig cards were the darlings of Leopard, the ZWxx cards REALLY need Snow Leopard to work well at all.

Try the ZWxx ROM I wrote, there were also other folks who wrote them. Try them all, but try them in SL.

 

[MacVidCards]

Hi 666sheep

my card looks like the attached pictures.
i tried the rom i found somewhere here on one of the eralier posts
flashed it with the original rom, but gray screen and kerne panic --> hard reeboot.
so i tried pipomolo42 way and created a custom rom --> same thing, gray screen

I'm running 10.6.4 by the way and did nothing expect the flashing of the rom (as i understood i do not to need to do any OS X modifications such a separate driver installation)

thanks for further help

Roger

I have never held one of those 4870s in my hand, but I do know that LOTS of people have had luck with the 1 Gig version.

May be worth a few hours reading through posts, or at least searching this thread.

Did you check your finished ROM for 2 @ MCUCs? That "GoTo" address lines up with where the 2nd one is?

 

[rhubschmid]

hi guys

it worked! i used the http://groths.org/zeus/XYZ.zip way now and suddenly it worked. i have the new sapphire card.

i also have testet it with 1.3 benchmark and achieved the following results (see attachement) are these anywhere where they should be or is my system not running at full speed?


Also something that strikes me is the fact that the card gets quite hot and the fan is very loud, is this normal or am i just used to the silent 7300GT?

With additional fan modification, what am i risking? overheating?

thanks guys again for your help
Roger

 

[ProfDrLuigi]

I kept the Following kexts at 10.6.4:

ATI4800controller.kext
ATIFrameBuffer.kext
ATISupport.kext

Be careful. Tried that before. Strange behavior of the Sound-Preferences-Pane. Doesnt´worked and the preferences window went completely white.

Restored the 10.6.3 and all was fine.

 

[gtsimon]

XFX ZWFC Ver G.1

I'm in the same boat as Moseman. This card won't flash with any of the ROMs I've seen on this thread. Any thoughts or successes?

 

[Cindori]

rom will always flash if it's the same model of card, so in your case it's simply the card that is not compatible with zeus. use bootcd

 

[gtsimon]

XFX ZWFC Ver G.1

Thanks, Cindori. I also tried flashing using the modified apple faceless flasher. The system profiler recognizes the card but says that neither port is connected even though they are. I'm in SL 10.6.4. I've also tried reverting to the 10.6.3 drivers.

 

[emoseman]

The ZWxx cards are vastly inferior to the earlier XFX 4870 cards. Cheaper fan, cheaper components, and 15-20% slower.

Also, while the early XFX 4870 1 Gig cards were the darlings of Leopard, the ZWxx cards REALLY need Snow Leopard to work well at all.

Try the ZWxx ROM I wrote, there were also other folks who wrote them. Try them all, but try them in SL.

Okay, I'll try to Snow Leopard route. I've been meaning to upgrade anyhow.

Thanks for the help!

--
Evan

 

[Adrianlee]

Does anyone has success with the below card? I don't see anyone with the same PN and SKU# with search from this thread.

PN 288-2E131-000SA
SKU# 11133-20-42R

I would like to confirm it works before I buy. Thank you

hi, anyone knows if this model works ??

 

[emoseman]

So, I upgraded and I think I got a little farther now. The system boots with the Radeon 4870, but if it is the only card in the system and if I have one or two monitors connected the display is garbled. I can see some blocky discolored version of what I would normally expect.

Is this a OS driver issue? Or do I need to try a different ROM?

--
Evan

Okay, I'll try to Snow Leopard route. I've been meaning to upgrade anyhow.

Thanks for the help!

--
Evan