Urgent Testing Advice for G5 PCIe

[Methanoid]

Hi

I have a chance to buy a G5 Quad but it has no GPU so I am extremely untrusting that it works. I have a number of PC PCIe cards to hand and wonder if I can boot and test it with a PC (not G5 flashed) card...

FYI I have Geforce 7500, 7600GS, Quadro FX1500, Quadro FX5500, 8600GT, ATI HD2600XT, Quadro K4200, RadeonPro W7000.

I know last Nvidia cards Apple offered for G5 were 6xxx/7xxx series so I first 3 should be driver compatible at least but if there is no OS on the machine... How can I test functionality?

Yes, I expect the LC is potentially leaking

 

[Amethyst1]

An unflashed card won’t (normally) display anything in a PPC Mac, neither in OpenFirmware nor in OS X.

Linux can initialise unflashed cards but I don’t know if that’s generally true or applies to some GPUs only.

One thing you may be able to do is put in a drive that already has Leopard installed and Screen Sharing enabled, and access the G5 using another machine once it’s booted up headlessly.

 

[Methanoid]

An unflashed card won’t (normally) display anything in a PPC Mac, neither in OpenFirmware nor in OS X.

Linux can initialise unflashed cards but I don’t know if that’s generally true or applies to some GPUs only.

One thing you may be able to do is put in a drive that already has Leopard installed and Screen Sharing enabled, and access the G5 using another machine once it’s booted up headlessly.

Thanks, just the person I was hoping would reply and quickly.

Going tomorrow to see it. No 2nd machine and no HDD with Leopard so can't do that.

I do have PC USB KB and Mouse and Monitor I can take... and could burn a DVD or make a USB flash drive with Linux on. But then how to select that device in Mac firmware screen when I cannot see any outputs?

I mean, nobody would remove a GPU from a functional machine (there are TWO actually) would they? Given the machine I am interested in is a G5 Quad I have to suspect leakage too so maybe PSU has been toasted by that.

Any advice for things to look at if I cannot test it then?

 

[Amethyst1]

I do have PC USB KB and Mouse and Monitor I can take... and could burn a DVD or make a USB flash drive with Linux on. But then how to select that device in Mac firmware screen when I cannot see any outputs?

Booting from DVD is done by holding [C] after powering on.

 

[Methanoid]

So I could boot a PPC Linux (happen to have a couple burned already) and using a PC flashed 7600GS (no power cable needed) or Quadro FX1500 (also no power cable) let it boot to desktop and if no pic I'll know...

To be honest I doubt its even gonna power on.... in which case I wont bother

BUT... another rando Q, can any of the "G5 Processor" covers fit on the Quad (it is missing cover) or do I need a specific one?

 

[Amethyst1]