I just got an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro off eBay, and it’s having some trouble working with my Power Mac G4 Digital Audio. I taped pins 3 & 11 to make the card work at 4x, but I still get a black screen. I am able to VNC into the Mac, so I checked System Profiler, which says that no cards are present. I’ve looked around and found that some cards have an incompatible ROM, though I think it only affects display output and not detection. I already have Graphiccelerator to flash it as well as a version 120 ROM, but I can’t do anything with them without seeing the card on the system. I don’t have access to any other desktop systems, so I can’t use a compatible Mac to flash it, though I do have Linux installed, so that might be able to see and flash it. Any ideas?
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Radeon 9600 Pro not detected on Power Mac G4 DA
- Thread starter JackMacWindows
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It's an OEM 9600 Pro for Mac with 64 MB of VRAM. It has model numbers 603-4415 and 630-4925 on the back.
From the photos you provided you should definitely cover the pins properly before investigating. The whole pin should be covered neatly by tape. Here's one of my cards as an example (also a 9600)
This was done by applying a scotchtape strip first, then cutting where desired with a cardboard blade and removing the superfluous parts. You should never cut horizontally, nor tape anything above the pin. I'm having a hard time describing the procedure. I've forgotten the url I had that explained it perfectly with pictures. http://themacelite.wikidot.com/pins-3-and-11 also has resources on this but the taping photo is gone and there's no description
You shouldn't have any trouble with a G5 9600 in a digital audio once pins 3 and 11 are properly masked.
This was done by applying a scotchtape strip first, then cutting where desired with a cardboard blade and removing the superfluous parts. You should never cut horizontally, nor tape anything above the pin. I'm having a hard time describing the procedure. I've forgotten the url I had that explained it perfectly with pictures. http://themacelite.wikidot.com/pins-3-and-11 also has resources on this but the taping photo is gone and there's no description
You shouldn't have any trouble with a G5 9600 in a digital audio once pins 3 and 11 are properly masked.
I retaped it following your instructions, but still no signal. I'm going to see if I can find a friend with a newer Power Mac to test if the card even works at all.
Many ATi cards dont need this tape method. It can cause problems like electrical short, a dirty AGP Slot, or a simple malfunction (if you lucky)
For a 9600 Pro -> I recommend removing resistor R15 & R60 on back of the GPU Board to disable Pin 3 & 11 effective.
Here is a picture of yours with resistors inside a red mark. Ofc you can remove that tape after mod
For a 9600 Pro -> I recommend removing resistor R15 & R60 on back of the GPU Board to disable Pin 3 & 11 effective.
Here is a picture of yours with resistors inside a red mark. Ofc you can remove that tape after mod
I have never heard or seen the tape mod cause any issues that you describe
and I personally have taped a lot of AGP cards
and so have many other members on this forum.
I would advise against removing Resistors on the PCB as if you ever want to revert the changes it can be very tricky to do so if you dont know how to SMD solder or dont have the correct resistors anymore
as to why the Radeon 9600 does not show up in the G4 DA
its because some DA and QS G4 Towers are simply incompatible with the Radeon 9600 and especially the FireGL X3 (and other Radeon X800/X850 cards) a good amount of the time Radeon 9600s do work but sometimes they dont, (FireGL X3s dont work generally, and your very lucky if you have a Card and QS/DA combo that does work)
you can try and get another Radeon 9600 but the finicky-ness of them in DA/QSs actually caused ATI to pull the QS/DA from the Radeon 9600 PC Mac editions compatibility list...
and I personally have taped a lot of AGP cards
and so have many other members on this forum.
I would advise against removing Resistors on the PCB as if you ever want to revert the changes it can be very tricky to do so if you dont know how to SMD solder or dont have the correct resistors anymore
as to why the Radeon 9600 does not show up in the G4 DA
its because some DA and QS G4 Towers are simply incompatible with the Radeon 9600 and especially the FireGL X3 (and other Radeon X800/X850 cards) a good amount of the time Radeon 9600s do work but sometimes they dont, (FireGL X3s dont work generally, and your very lucky if you have a Card and QS/DA combo that does work)
you can try and get another Radeon 9600 but the finicky-ness of them in DA/QSs actually caused ATI to pull the QS/DA from the Radeon 9600 PC Mac editions compatibility list...
You had trouble with oem G5 9600s? I'm surprised, being in the high tier of passive-cooled cards I have like 4 spare cards[...], and with 1 DA and 3 QS I have never experienced bad card detection so far.
Though yeah, the firegl X3 (and I've read about retail 9600 pro) often syncs wrongly with the bus and causes bad detection with pc133 G4s.
I personally have not tried that combo of cards (I dont own a QS/DA sadly)
however its well reported that OEM G5 cards can have issues too
I actually have a Athlon XP board which suffers from the same bug that plagues DA/QSs and it will refuse to work with both my FireGL X3 and Radeon 9600 PC Mac edition, it was pretty interesting to see a PC suffer from the same issue
it all stems from the fact that some AGP Radeon cards dont like being initialised as PCI cards (its also why some AGP Radeon cards are incompatible with those crippled "AGP" slots some budget PC Mobos had)
I could never get a G5 9650 to work with the tape mod on my DA, it did exactly as you describe. In the end I bought a PC Radeon 9800 Pro and flashed it, it worked perfectly first time.
Hi there. Same thing happened to me. I have bought a Mac 9600 Pro (with ADC port), taped pins 3 and 11 and can't make it work - my DA 466 chimes, starts up but the screen remains black. Did anyone on this thread find some sort of fix ?
Thanks a lot, community!
Thanks a lot, community!
I just ended up reselling the 9600 Pro and bought a 9000 Pro instead. I tried to flash the card with an older firmware, but it didn't work.
Thanks for the advice.
If anyone needs a 64MB Radeon 9600, I'm happy to give it away at the cost of shipping (or to give it in person to someone happy to meet me in London).
I installed a Radeon 9600 from my G5 to a Digital Audio G4. It is a video card without ADC connector, it has 2 DVIs connector.
I taped pin 3 and 11. The card works perfectly in desktop applications, and Openmark give me a result of 4000.
But when i play games like UT 2004 and Quake 3 sometimes Powermac freeze and i need to restart it.
Is it a card incompatibility? Thanks!
I taped pin 3 and 11. The card works perfectly in desktop applications, and Openmark give me a result of 4000.
But when i play games like UT 2004 and Quake 3 sometimes Powermac freeze and i need to restart it.
Is it a card incompatibility? Thanks!
I just bought a 9000 card to replace my re-started (after 11 years) twin mirror door. I have read various reports on 9600 cards and one issue is the power supply ... and old PPC machines can have flakey power supplies. They can be repaired if one is good at changing resistors, and in the USA one can have them refurbished. But ... if a 9600 is causing problems, might it relate to the power in the AGP slot? Or to the AGP's power and the Power Supply?
My twin mirror door has a Samsung 400 watt PSU. I think the PowerMac3,4 Digital Audio units had a 340 Watt Power supply. The G5 power supplies were over 600 watts I think.
One can add power to a 9600 card too, from elsewhere on the motherboard. It seemed to me that the earlier the G4 tower, the quieter, the lighter (the Digital Audio weighed about 13kg, the twin mirror door around 19kg) and the less power that their PSUs supplied. With the power supply issues on G4s I myself was cautious about power demanding GPUs.
My twin mirror door has a Samsung 400 watt PSU. I think the PowerMac3,4 Digital Audio units had a 340 Watt Power supply. The G5 power supplies were over 600 watts I think.
One can add power to a 9600 card too, from elsewhere on the motherboard. It seemed to me that the earlier the G4 tower, the quieter, the lighter (the Digital Audio weighed about 13kg, the twin mirror door around 19kg) and the less power that their PSUs supplied. With the power supply issues on G4s I myself was cautious about power demanding GPUs.
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Thank you for your answer.
I removed resistors R15 & R60 on back of the Board to disable Pin 3 & 11 without scotchtape. Then i downclocked 11% GPU and ram memory with Aticcelerator II.
Now i tried UT2004 and other games without any issue. I think you are right about the power supply, considering the Sonnet G4 upgrade and other pci cards.