Radeon 7000 Flashing Woes

[carbide]

Hopefully double-posting is kosher.

I tested running ATI Multi Flasher from OS 9.2.2 and it's giving the same error, I even grabbed the ROM off of the Rage card to see what would happen and it's still stuck on trying to flash one of the Radeon 7000 ROMs. I'll do some digging, but does anyone know offhand if there's another flashing tool that works in OS 9 / OS X? Or should I just try it from a PC (once I order a cheap heat sink)?

 

[treellama]

The Graphiccelerator UI is confusing. You need to pick a menu item to install the ROM, not open multiflasher. So double check that you’re actually getting the rom loaded into Multiflashsr

 

[Phipli]

Try using 10.3.* instead of 10.4. permissions to access hardware for apps changed somehow I think... I could be wrong.

 

[carbide]

The Graphiccelerator UI is confusing. You need to pick a menu item to install the ROM, not open multiflasher. So double check that you’re actually getting the rom loaded into Multiflashsr

So the "Open ROM" option from the Graphiccelerator popup itself is the wrong choice then? I'd complain about what a mess that UI design is, but on the other hand it's... what, twenty years old? I know any UIs I attempted that far back sucked too.

 

[treellama]

So the "Open ROM" option from the Graphiccelerator popup itself is the wrong choice then? I'd complain about what a mess that UI design is, but on the other hand it's... what, twenty years old? I know any UIs I attempted that far back sucked too.

I am not sitting in front of that machine right now, but yes I believe "Open ROM" is the wrong choice. Check the menus for something that offers to install a ROM into Multi Flasher. Once you do it you'll get two file pickers, and maybe also a warning dialog.

 

[carbide]

Update the... I dunno. Third or fourth?

Using the correct set of menu options in Graphiccelerator, I was able to flash the unmodded Diamond #1 with a reduced v226 ROM with no error messages. Even better, the G4 booted up afterwards and detected it. I guess "hotswapping" VGA cables wasn't a thing back then, as I couldn't get output moving the monitor from the Rage AGP card to the Radeon, but rebooting with it plugged into the Radeon's VGA port got it to display also.


Then I re-flashed the other two cards with the PC firmware from my linux box and went to test them with Graphiccellerator with less good results. For the modded Diamond #2, I attempted to flash it with the v226 full ROM. It completed successfully, and the G4 booted (though it took its time), but when it was done booting, it no longer saw the card at all. Which is a slight improvement from refusing to boot entirely, but not by much.

In the interest of time, I decided to move ahead with the green Xserve card. I put it in and flashed it with the v208 full firmware noted previously in post #13 to see if it would act any different from before. It flashed with no errors, and on reboot, it was detected!
...as an 8MB card.


So I rebooted with the VGA cable plugged into it and got a screen full of garbage. When it was done booting, I could tell that it was trying its best to display my desktop, but failing utterly.


No idea what's happening there. My plan tonight is to re-flash diamond #2 with the 208 firmware to see what happens, and also to find and run ATI's ROM updater on the Xserve card to see if "officially" updating it to 226 fixes anything. Of course, I'm still open to ideas, criticisms, pointing out obvious mistakes, etc.

 

[Phipli]

I guess "hotswapping" VGA cables wasn't a thing back then, as I couldn't get output moving the monitor from the Rage AGP card to the Radeon, but rebooting with it plugged into the Radeon's VGA port got it to display also.

No, you shouldn't hot swap VGA (or apple video, or any dsub connections really). First and foremost, the connector isn't designed to be safely hot swapped and powered pins might connect before ground causing an overvoltage into a signal line before they're referenced to the same ground....

But also the computer initialises settings based on what monitors are detected during power on.

 

[carbide]

No, you shouldn't hot swap VGA (or apple video, or any dsub connections really). First and foremost, the connector isn't designed to be safely hot swapped and powered pins might connect before ground causing an overvoltage into a signal line before they're referenced to the same ground....

But also the computer initialises settings based on what monitors are detected during power on.

You'd think I'd remember that, though thinking about it, i never would have had much of a reason to even try it back in the day. The old video cards only had a single port, and I never had anything with multiple cards. If I was plugging or unplugging something, it was to move it with it powered off.
To the general dsub comment, I've been hotplugging 9-pin serial pretty much forever (even recently, thank you ancient PLC hardware) and never had an issue/been told not to. Different voltages, controller expectations on that though.

Good thing to keep in mind though.

 

[Phipli]

To the general dsub comment, I've been hotplugging 9-pin serial pretty much forever (even recently, thank you ancient PLC hardware) and never had an issue/been told not to. Different voltages, controller expectations on that though.

Serial seems to be a bit of an exception although I'm not certain. Generally hot plugging serial was accepted back in the day, so I'm assuming that the transceivers on motherboards were designed to be able to handle it.

VGA, SCSI, and others, you were explicitly warned not to.

The floppy port seems to be the worst - I've seen multiple people kill their SWIM chip by hot plugging a floppy drive.

 

[carbide]

Ugh. Another hour and a half of my day wasted with about nothing to show for it.

On the Xserve card, I managed to almost get it working with the 119 ROM version included in the 208 Updater application. Except, the colours were off and the image was unstable. I then used the updater to bring it up to 208, and I was back to it only showing 8MB of memory (I didn't bother trying to boot with a monitor connected). Then for the heck of it I loaded the 226 reduced ROM from Diamond #1 on it and I wrapped all the way back to where I started, where it would boot to the apple logo, then a blank grey screen and stay there.

On Diamond #2, I tried 119 and 208 from the updater, took another swing at 226, and then tried the same reduced ROM. All of them lead to the exact same symptoms - extended boot time (computer bongs, output on Rage card blips (or whatever you want to call bouncing the monitor out of standby for a second), then about a minute delay before the HDD spins up and it starts loading) and the card no longer shows in system profiler. I had to hook the SPI programmer up and blank the flash chip between tests, which was tedious (I now hate those SOIC-8 clips with the fury of a thousand suns).

I'm somewhat at a quandary now. If my PC with PCI ports was working, I'd load up both of the trouble cards with PC ROMs and test them there, just to see if maybe the cards themselves are bad. Or, I could try to return them, though I've still got another week or two before I /have/ to. Anyone have any ideas?