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Ultimate Thread: 4890 in Mac Pro

Peloche said:
Hi Mackilroy,

Not easy to locate you, Gondwana is large :), if you could order in the UK here is the link

http://www.applemacparts.co.uk/stor...ywords=NVIDIA+Quadro+FX+4500,+5500+po&x=7&y=6
Click to expand...

Heh, wish I could but I'm in the USA. Doesn't look like they ship here.

As far as molex goes, I've got the cables that came with the machine but they're far too short. I could go get one at a store, I'd just have to have one long enough. Cindori, I know you're powering your 4890 that way. Anyone else? Got any photos to show?
 
Yorb said:
I used 2 molex splitters to get power from the optical bay, and yes it's kind of a pain because you have to move your #1 hard drive to another slot, and it helps to temporarily unscrew the SATA plug for the #1 hard drive, but it does work. Unfortunately I'm thinking getting all this power from the optical bay may be causing some problems, so he may be better off buying the proper cables (which, by the way, you can find on eBay too. Search "Mac ATI cable").

And for YOUR problem, did you read this? https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8813922/ That's how I got mine working. It was doing the chime, chime, chime thing for a while and apparently the 10.6.2 combo update and the qe_ci 10.6.2 installer and the kext's in that archive.zip somehow fixed it so it would get past the chiming and actually boot (with a black screen). Worth a try I'd say.
Click to expand...

Thank you Yorb!
What I did was take the card out, wen to my friends place down the road. He made a Bootable USB thumb drive for DOS with the ATIflash tool (and drivers from that thread). We booted the USB drive, flashed the card, then I put it in my machine.

Immediately I saw the grey flower and then a message saying my card does not have enough power - while huge screen tearing was happening as I moved the mouse.

I'm going to do the combo update with the QE_CI 10.6.2 patch.
 
Mackilroy said:
Heh, wish I could but I'm in the USA. Doesn't look like they ship here.

As far as molex goes, I've got the cables that came with the machine but they're far too short. I could go get one at a store, I'd just have to have one long enough. Cindori, I know you're powering your 4890 that way. Anyone else? Got any photos to show?
Click to expand...

What I did to get this sorted out was have the molex connector join the supplied PICE power cable in the small cavity below Drive Bay 1. If you look back there you will see a bit of space on the left. So I have the connection laying there. I only use 1 cable to the optical bay. The other cable is from the x1900 I took out. If you didn't have an X1900, then you won't be able to do it the way I did. The cable from the X1900 plugs onto the motherboard, so at least that part is still easy.

Getting the Molex power from the optical bay required me to swap connection points going to the stock burner. I made the burner take the longest connection so the molex extension had more to reach the back corner on the left. As you push the optical cage back into the optical bay, you can pull the molex connector through just enough to join with the PCIE cable that came with the 4890.

If your still unsure, I might be convinced to pull it all out for some photos.
 
Altimeter88 said:
Drexus,

Did you have a chance to backup your original ROM? A few of us are desperately waiting for someone to upload an original ROM form a Sapphire new edition with Hynix memory. If you did that can you upload it here, it would be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I tried to find a way to do it, but I didn't find anything.
 
Just a quickie, has anyone been able to confirm if the Display port for the 4890 is the only secondary port that works under OSX? I know under bootcamp with the new EFI firmware, the only secondary port that works (to my knowledge and the CCC recognizes) is the HDMI port.
 
Update

Ok, I've reinstalled 10.6.2 and applied the patch before I restarted. The screen tearing is gone, but the power warning is still there.

If the warning is an error, then I guess I'm ok for now.

What happened? How did semaca and I get into the same spot?
 
Drexus said:
Ok, I've reinstalled 10.6.2 and applied the patch before I restarted. The screen tearing is gone, but the power warning is still there.

If the warning is and error, then I guess I'm ok for now.

What happened? How did semaca and I get into the same spot?
Click to expand...

I get the same power warning but I do have both power outlets connected, so it shouldn't really be a problem. I have both power cables connected to the logic board.
 
Drexus said:
Ok, I've reinstalled 10.6.2 and applied the patch before I restarted. The screen tearing is gone, but the power warning is still there.

If the warning is and error, then I guess I'm ok for now.

What happened? How did semaca and I get into the same spot?
Click to expand...

Yeap as AnimeFun answered i've got it also, it's just a mouse click away, it's a false alarm :D
 
Drexus said:
What I did to get this sorted out was have the molex connector join the supplied PICE power cable in the small cavity below Drive Bay 1. If you look back there you will see a bit of space on the left. So I have the connection laying there. I only use 1 cable to the optical bay. The other cable is from the x1900 I took out. If you didn't have an X1900, then you won't be able to do it the way I did. The cable from the X1900 plugs onto the motherboard, so at least that part is still easy.

Getting the Molex power from the optical bay required me to swap connection points going to the stock burner. I made the burner take the longest connection so the molex extension had more to reach the back corner on the left. As you push the optical cage back into the optical bay, you can pull the molex connector through just enough to join with the PCIE cable that came with the 4890.

If your still unsure, I might be convinced to pull it all out for some photos.
Click to expand...
I'd actually love to do it this way - did you buy any extra cabling or just use what you already had? Unless I splice my molex cables together I don't know if it would be long enough. Some pictures, please? :)
 
I Lied!

Yes. I am a filthy liar. The cable placement in the optical bay is not what I remembered. Here is what I actually did...
First, the molex cable I got (free from a friend) was a splitter. So 1 female molex to two male molex ends [insert Champ VO "Pardon?"].

From this image (bigger is always more clear), you can see the female connector in the corner (it's the one in the middle of the splitter). It is connected to the black power line from the main supply (you can see the remaining unused connector Apple left for a possible addition). One end of the splitter is connected to the burner (right), the other end drops down into the drive bay below.
attachment.php


Here you can see the other end of the splitter coming down (left) - it has a white connector and is attached to the black connector of the PCIE power cable that came with the 4890 (yellow/black wires on right).
NOTE the small cavity where the connectors have room to hide form Drive #1.
attachment.php


If we step back a bit, we can see the PCIE cable run down to the card ... also, where the Apple PCIE power cable (black) is shown going from the card to the logic board.
attachment.php
 

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I did some testing and just wanted to report my findings:

As reported a few pages back if you have a Sapphire New Edition with Hynix memory and you used Peloche's modified EFI ROM it will work in OSX but will NOT work in anthing on the windows bootcamp side. This includeds booting to a windows boot CD, install CD, or the windows partition/hard drive itself.

The only way to succesfully boot into windows is to keep your existing Mac card in (previous reported was an ATI 2600, mine is an 8800GT) and boot with your monitor connected to that Mac card.

Then once your screen goes black (this indicates that you are now at the windows login screen) now swap your DVI monitor cable to the Sapphire card and you should be good.

Hopefully we can get our hands on a Hynix ROM that can be modified and get this bug fixed.
 
Awesome, thanks for the photos. I've got my 4890 working in Windows now, going to back up the ROM and then reboot into OS X to flash it. Looking forward to being able to finally use it. :)
 
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