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Driving a 23“ DVI Cinema Display from a Powermac 8500?

robin-fo

Well-known member
Hi everyone

I‘d like to use my 23“ Aluminium Apple Cinema Display with my Apple Workgroup Server 8550 (technically about the same as a 7500/7600/8500). I need the full resolution, but not much 3D acceleration. Are there any compatible video cards and is this even possible?
 

Phipli

Well-known member
A flashed PC Radeon 7000 with 64MB of VRAM will do it... The mac version won't because it doesn't have enough VRAM or some other reason (it should have enough - I shouldn't believe everything I read on the internet). The flashed 64MB card only reports 32MB, but works at 1920x1200.

Radeon 9200 just about works in a 8500, with 9.1 and 9.2 only I think (perhaps even 9.2 only - I'd want to double check). Bewarned that the 9200 and 9250 were both sold in boxes that said "9200". Both can be made to work but the 9250 needs a bit more faff. Neither (drivers wise) make great OS 9 cards.
 
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Phipli

Well-known member
Thanks a lot! So this one might work?


Can I flash it using a Mac (or maybe with a chip programmer)?
That card is a good price, but flashing seems to be a little unreliable with what cards it works with so I can't tell you yes or no sorry. You'll need a new ROM chip because PC cards come with a ROM chip that is too small for the mac firmware.
 

waynestewart

Well-known member
a number of people have flashed the ROM with a trimmed image.
The down side is that there's no boot screen. You have a blank screen until the drivers load
 

jeremywork

Well-known member
I can also confirm that a flashed 7000 will happily plug and play with a 23" aluminum cinema display at 1920x1200.

Additional background might be tied to the same issue mentioned in the August 2005 Radeon ROM update documentation.
For the 9000 Pro, 9800 Pro, and 9800 Pro Special Edition, "Fixed hotplug bug with 20", 23", and 30" DVI Apple Cinema Displays" is listed. Unfortunately nothing like that for the 8500 (though not too different from the 9000 Pro, itself.)

In the mode tables section, the doc also mentions "The RADEON card's maximum digital resolution is 1920x1200 (using a reduced blanking interval compatible with Apple's Cinema HD ADC Display, using an Apple or third-party powered adapter)." This isn't directly related to the aluminum models though.

Most other DVI 1920x1200 panels should have better compatibility.
 

Attachments

  • ati-mac-rom-update-aug-2005.dmg.zip
    3.1 MB · Views: 2
  • ATI RADEON Mac Edition Firmware Update - Read Me First.pdf
    167.5 KB · Views: 4

robin-fo

Well-known member
I can also confirm that a flashed 7000 will happily plug and play with a 23" aluminum cinema display at 1920x1200.

Additional background might be tied to the same issue mentioned in the August 2005 Radeon ROM update documentation.
For the 9000 Pro, 9800 Pro, and 9800 Pro Special Edition, "Fixed hotplug bug with 20", 23", and 30" DVI Apple Cinema Displays" is listed. Unfortunately nothing like that for the 8500 (though not too different from the 9000 Pro, itself.)

In the mode tables section, the doc also mentions "The RADEON card's maximum digital resolution is 1920x1200 (using a reduced blanking interval compatible with Apple's Cinema HD ADC Display, using an Apple or third-party powered adapter)." This isn't directly related to the aluminum models though.

Most other DVI 1920x1200 panels should have better compatibility.
Cool! Let's see how it turns out. Plug- and play might be important for me, as I'm planning to use a KVM to share screen and mouse/keyboard with a Mac Mini G4.
 

robin-fo

Well-known member
Thanks a lot! So this one might work?


Can I flash it using a Mac (or maybe with a chip programmer)?
Ok the card arrived, but I wasn't able to flash it with my Powermac 8550. I tried several tools and even installed MacOS 10.3 on it but with no success. The onboard Flash is an AT25F512 so there should be enough space? I haven't got an old PC so can't flash it under DOS. A new 1024K chip is now underway so my next attempt will be to flash the chip directly.
 

Phipli

Well-known member
Ok the card arrived, but I wasn't able to flash it with my Powermac 8550. I tried several tools and even installed MacOS 10.3 on it but with no success. The onboard Flash is an AT25F512 so there should be enough space? I haven't got an old PC so can't flash it under DOS. A new 1024K chip is now underway so my next attempt will be to flash the chip directly.
The mac firmware updates don't work on PC cards that I know - how were you trying to flash it?
 

robin-fo

Well-known member
I tried with Graphiccelerator on 9.1 and 10.3 as well as the official ROM updater for the Mac version.
 

Phipli

Well-known member
Just a heads up driver-wise, I find that after a while the newest Mac OS 9 drivers start causing the computer to pause for 30 seconds or longer before loading the icons and on the desktop on boot. Because of this I tend to run a bit older version of the drivers.
 

Phipli

Well-known member
After carefully finding a listing on eBay.com rather than my local ebay, I just realised you're in Switzerland 🤣
 

CC_333

Well-known member
I would imagine that Mac OS X Panther on a PowerPC 60? running at 300 MHz with 128 MB of RAM is extremely slow, to the point of utter and complete uselessness!

How can it be?!

c
 
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