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Flashing a Radeon X800 Pro for a G4?

John8520

Well-known member
Hey all,
Digging through a parts bin last night I came across a PC Radeon X800 Pro that I forgot I had. It's a good AGP card, and there were Radeon X800s shipped with Mac firmware (both in the G5 and as retail variants) - but these are the "XT" version, which, as far as I can tell, is the same as the FireGL X3.

X800 XT Mac ROMs do exist for flashing onto PC cards, but I'm not very confident that they would work on an X800 Pro. Has anyone ever tested this? Any ideas?
 

trag

Well-known member
You might check the forums at Strange Dogs. I think this link I have stored is to a specific discussion, but you should be able to back up the general forums:

https://strangedogs.proboards.com/#category-3

I'm pretty sure htat what you want to do will go better if you replace the flash chip with a larger one. On the R7000 it is M25P05 vs. M25P10. I'm not sure about hte X800, although I have a couple and four FireGL X3s in the attic I mean to convert one of these days.
 

John8520

Well-known member
If you're interested in selling one of those FireGL X3s, let me know!

I have found a bit of evidence that people have managed to flash an X800 Pro with the reduced ROM to work in an MDD, using a tool to clock down the ROM to match the proper core/RAM speed of the X800 Pro - but seemingly the QS has issues with it? At least in this one particular case.

Thread in question:

I removed R2 and R4 on mine yesterday (the Pin 3 & 11 resistors) and the QS won't boot at all with the card installed - it instantly turns off, so I think maybe I need to just cut the traces - not sure.

I have confirmed that with screen sharing/VNC enabled, the QS will completely boot with no GPU installed and I can VNC in to manage it. I've done that with my xserves before but I didn't know that the towers could do that as well.
 

trag

Well-known member
If you're interested in selling one of those FireGL X3s, let me know!

Probably silly of me, but I keep thinking I'll get around to using them. I actually had a about a ten year hiatus in projects and now I'm getting stuff done, so maybe I'll get back to them.

There are more here:
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/eu-ebay-finds-thread.37466/post-419616

But the shipping charges are about twice the price of the item. Maybe we could find someone in Europe local to the seller, although a those rates, it sure seems like the shipping must be the profit center.
 

John8520

Well-known member
Yeah... I'm in the US myself and don't looooove the idea of spending that much on a card that's not even guaranteed to work. Hmmmm.
 

Daniël

Well-known member
I removed R2 and R4 on mine yesterday (the Pin 3 & 11 resistors) and the QS won't boot at all with the card installed - it instantly turns off, so I think maybe I need to just cut the traces - not sure.

Speaking from experience, the Quicksilvers are terribly picky about GPUs and other cards. I've positively pulled my hair out once, reflashing a PC GPU many times to try and get it to work on my Quicksilver, which would refuse to power on.

...turns out it worked just fine on my MDD. You might be running into the same problem. Sadly I do not know of any solution to get it to work with a fussy QS if it is the case.
 

John8520

Well-known member
Speaking from experience, the Quicksilvers are terribly picky about GPUs and other cards. I've positively pulled my hair out once, reflashing a PC GPU many times to try and get it to work on my Quicksilver, which would refuse to power on.
I think you're right, in this case. Not the end of the world, I'm not doing anything terribly GPU-intensive, I just figured since I have this X800 I should try and use it in a computer that I also want to use!

I have the stock 4MX in it now, which is fine, and also works in 9.2.2 which is marginally important, heh. Maybe one day I'll find a 4Ti that isn't $600....

1631529414451.png

Ouch.
 

Unknown_K

Well-known member
Apple specific G4 cards other then what shipped with the units are hard to find. You can flash a PC version as long as you don't have a ADC monitor you want to use with it. I stuck a 6600 G5 AGP card (not AGP Pro) into a G4 and all I had to do was cut a trace so the 8x AGP card would work in a 2/4x Mac. The 24V tab is in a different location so there is no interference (G4 and G5 have different locations for the extra slot tab).

Mostly I just stock up on Radeon 9000 cards since they work with OS 9 and OSX and I don't really game on Macs anyway.
 

Juror22

Well-known member
Maybe one day I'll find a 4Ti that isn't $600....
Doing a quick search for "nvidia geforce4 titanium ti4600 128mb mac" and specifying sold items I came up with three of these that have sold for around $200-ish since mid-July.
 
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