The Great Gazelle PCI Hack Thread, Part 2

joevt · Feb 28, 2023

trag said:
On the Macs I've looked at, the NVRAM physical storage is provided by an 8KB SRAM (static RAM) chip. It is pin compatible with 32KB SRAM chips. However, to be useful, Apple would have had to implement the extra 2 address lines. I have no idea how the system addresses NVRAM and/or if the assumption of 8KB is built into the system. But if one is hard coding addresses, it might be interesting to substitute in a 32KB SRAM chip and see if NVRAM space is expanded. I guess the extra space would also need to be in the machine's memory map for NVRAM.

I have installed 32KB SRAM chips, and the machines in question worked fine afterwards, but I didn't have the software chops to really explore whether the additional space was available. The utilities I tried to interrogate the size of NVRAM may just report what they expect.

The NVRAM is pretty much fixed in size. The 8K on Old World Macs is divided into partitions. The Open Firmware NVRAM variables are the last 0x800 bytes of the 0x2000 (8K) bytes.

Reading or writing a byte in NVRAM is different for each Mac. On the 7500/8500/8600, the address is 8 bits and represents a block of 32 bytes which means the limit is 8K total. I don't know if the address can be 16 bits by writing to a byte following the first address byte register that is at F301D000. Probably not.

For the Power Mac G3 (rev 3), you just access a byte at F3060000 + offset*16. 8K*16 = 128K. F3060000 happens to be the last 128K of the 512K sized BAR0 of Heathrow so I don't think you could access NVRAM bytes beyond 8K.

Even if the access methods could access more than 8K of NVRAM, you would have to make some patches to OF to make it usable. For OS 9 or OS X, the patches would be more difficult - you would maybe make it so they don't modify NVRAM.

Some other options:
1) have the nvramrc script read more script from the unused parts of NVRAM. I have a version of XPostFacto that sets that up for my too large nvramrc script for OF 1.0.5.

2) have the nvramrc script read more script from a partition of a disk that is accessible by OF before probe-all is called. I haven't tried that yet. The partition could be any size and allow any length of script (limited only by OF memory). It could also contain fcode images to override parts of OF such as disk-label and mac-parts (to allow booting HFS+ partitions on GPT formatted disks) or to add new OF drivers for USB, FireWire, AHCI, NVMe (to allow booting from any of those) and Thunderbolt (to allow PCIe cards in external Thunderbolt enclosures).

3) instead of a partition, have the nvramrc script read more script from a PCI option ROM. The setup required should be very little (you just need to map the rom) unless the PCI card is behind a PCI to PCI bridge. In that case you may need to setup the PCI bridge yourself if you want the nvramrc script to occur before probe-all.

trag said:
While Gazelle has trouble with all PCI-PCI Bridge cards, PowerSurge (X500/X600) works properly with one level of PCI-PCI Bridge.

That is, in the PowerSurge machines, the issue is when you reach a second level of PCI Bridges. For example, the PowerSurge Clones made by Umax, the S900 and the J700, put all but 2 of the PCI slots behind a PCI-PCI Bridge. If one then installs a Bridged PCI card into one of those "lower" bridged slots, it will not function properly (with some interesting exceptions).

So, for example, an Adaptec 3940UW SCSI card which is two 2940UW cards behind a DEC 21052 bridge will work fine in an X500/X600 machine. In a Umax S900 or J700 it will work properly if it is installed in slot #1 or slot #2 (A or B). If it is installed in a lower slot it will be behind the PCI bridge when occupies slot C and it will not function as there is now a chain of two PCI-PCI bridges involved (motherboard PPB and card PPB).

I suspect, but do not know, that Apple did something in the Gazelle architecture that makes it act like the Gazelle PCI slots are already behind one bridge.

If that last sentence is true, then the PowerSurge and Gazelle problems are all symptoms of the same failure of Apple to properly deal with daisy chained PCI-PCI Bridges. OF will interrogate the first PCI-PCI bridge, but not any bridges behind that one.

My tests with dingusppc shows that Open Firmware 1.0.5 can enumerate PCI devices with multiple levels of PCI bridges. The issues you see may be software related or hardware related. First you have to check if Open Firmware is finding all the PCI devices, allocating all the PCI resources correctly (bus numbers, memory ranges, interrupts, etc.), and reading the Open Firmware Option ROMs. My "lspci for Open Firmware" can get the PCI info. Use dump-device-tree to get the Open Firmware info. The issue with Gazelle is definitely software related, since it was reproducible in dingusppc and could be fixed with an nvramrc patch. The issue with PowerSurge may be hardware related. There's very little we can do about the problem without being able to reproduce it.

trag said:
Also I read a little of that MacRumors thread you referenced. I can manufacture Rev. A, B or C ROMs for the Beige G3,. I think. I know I have the Rev. C code. I have had the Rev. B code in the past but I'm not sure where I stored it. I may or may not have the A code, as no one ever really wanted Rev. A.

The Macintosh ROM archive on Macintosh Garden has most of the Old World Power Mac ROMs.

trag said:
I have a bunch of the blank circuit boards for hte ROM module on hand still from the pEX project.

What's the pEX project?

trag said:
The S900 uses the $77D.28F2 ROM Revision which Apple used in the X500 and 7200 machines.

Check the rom checksum or md5 to find it in the list at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...gpk0JX_b7bXvmAg6-Dk7QDyKPY/edit#gid=840977089

Code:

cd "/Volumes/Work/Open Firmware and Name Registry/ROM Apple"

IFS=$'\n'
for therom in $(find .. -size 4M -not -path "*.src/*"); do
	echo $(
		thebytes=$(dd if="$therom" bs=32 count=1 2> /dev/null | xxd -p)
		printf "%s %s.%s " ${thebytes:0:8} ${thebytes:16:4} ${thebytes:36:4}
		md5 -q "$therom"
	) '"'"$therom"'"'
done | sort

077d.20f2 9feb69b3 b40998471e33d802b350f699127e36df "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/9FEB69B3 - Power Mac 6100 & 7100 & 8100.ROM"
077d.22f1 9c7c98f7 992b36209d478fa5cc1e7f3a3a462c18 "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/9C7C98F7 - Workgroup Server 9150-80.ROM"
077d.23f1 9b7a3aad 6355d8c6841591e284853f878b99720a "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/9B7A3AAD - Power Mac 7100 (newer).ROM"
077d.25f1 9b037f6f f08ad7ba1d8435ecfa24282aab1e0eb0 "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/9B037F6F - Workgroup Server 9150-120.ROM"
077d.26f1 63abfd3f f841c66c2e94bf1872959fed0d69cc65 "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/63ABFD3F - Power Mac & Performa 5200,5300,6200,6300.ROM"
077d.28a5 67a1aa96 b0f62eae6c86657bfe9c1489337ff698 "../ROM Apple/#7/TNT A5c1"
077d.28f1 96cd923d dfebb8fdad4124e02608429d98bf349b "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/96CD923D - Power Mac 7200&7500&8500&9500 v1.ROM"
077d.28f1 96cd923d dfebb8fdad4124e02608429d98bf349b "../ROM PowerPC Mac/ROM PM 9500/ROMs/@FFC00000 len-400000"
077d.28f2 9630c68b 2623a0c438045ea04d2cc67310c97743 "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/9630C68B - Power Mac 7200&7500&8500&9500 v2.ROM"
077d.29f1 6f5724c0 cdc2b21a8991193b856e5a92c6df5c06 "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/6F5724C0 - Performa 6400.ROM"
077d.29f1 6f5724c0 cdc2b21a8991193b856e5a92c6df5c06 "../ROM PowerPC Mac/ROM PM 5400 and 6400/ROMs/@FFC00000 Entire ROM"
077d.2af2 83c54f75 d42c0a7386a345a008883be07beb0a64 "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/83C54F75 - Powerbook 2300 & PB5x0 PPC Upgrade.ROM"
077d.2cc6 2bf65931 318e40f6a1f47925876eb64cc18c9ede "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/2BF65931 - Bandai Pippin (Kinka Dev).ROM"
077d.2cf2 2bef21b7 d0eb08a7375b7fff78f5e14574364ac4 "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/2BEF21B7 - Bandai Pippin (Kinka 1.0).ROM"
077d.32f3 83a21950 d78e3715e0dd30cd6174bdda747222eb "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/83A21950 - PowerBook 1400cs.ROM"
077d.34f2 960e4be9 edcf3422d712f61f83c07efc2401cbb8 "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/960E4BE9 - Power Mac 7300 & 7600 & 8600 & 9600 (v1).ROM"
077d.34f2 960e4be9 edcf3422d712f61f83c07efc2401cbb8 "../ROM PowerPC Mac/ROM PM 8600/ROMs/@FFC00000 Entire ROM"
077d.34f5 960fc647 88d7bec4daa28028c1fd311cf89ef8ab "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/960FC647 - Power Mac 8600 & 9600 (v2).ROM"
077d.35f2 6e92fe08 670f3d04b8844cf89aae4391398d4b5c "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/6E92FE08 - Power Mac 6500.ROM"
077d.35f2 6e92fe08 670f3d04b8844cf89aae4391398d4b5c "../ROM Apple/#3 Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh/TAM-ROM-6E92FE08-670f3d04b884.rom"
077d.39f1 46001f1b 296558a210dfb961ff2b1b7495d2de84 "../ROM Apple/#4 Power Express (9700 Prototype)/test2orig.ROM"
077d.39f1 46001f1b 296558a210dfb961ff2b1b7495d2de84 "../ROM PowerPC Mac/ROM Power Express 2/ROMs/test2orig.ROM"
077d.39f1 46001f1b 58b8a8fadd5cc5bec6c3f8100feaceb4 "../ROM Apple/#4 Power Express (9700 Prototype)/test1digi.ROM"
077d.39f1 46001f1b 58b8a8fadd5cc5bec6c3f8100feaceb4 "../ROM PowerPC Mac/ROM Power Express 1/ROMs/test1digi.ROM"
077d.40f2 79d68d63 b8612cc39a56d141feade9dc6361ba20 "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/79D68D63 - Power Mac G3 desktop.ROM"
077d.41f5 cbb01212 738ae2b8394d2fe9cd3d39012458e756 "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/CBB01212 - PowerBook G3 Wallstreet.ROM"
077d.41f6 b46ffb63 01a80c4452c8cdf385e11bd973b44f58 "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/B46FFB63 - PowerBook G3 Wallstreet PDQ.ROM"
077d.45f1 78fdb784 8fd9c829342fa76213e7efbad2a80823 "../ROM Apple/#2/78FDB784 - PowerMac G3 Minitower (beige 266MHz).ROM"
077d.45f1 78fdb784 8fd9c829342fa76213e7efbad2a80823 "../ROM PowerPC Mac/ROM Beige G3 233/ROMs/@FFC00000 len-400000"
077d.45f2 78f57389 616d792ee6e2877c5c8faf30b6c56fe8 "../ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/78F57389 - Power Mac G3 (v3).ROM"
077d.45f2 78f57389 616d792ee6e2877c5c8faf30b6c56fe8 "../ROM PowerPC Mac/ROM PM G3/ROMs/@FFC00000 len-400000"

Notice in the above list that some ROMs with the same revision and checksum may have different MD5 which means at least one of those dumps is probably wrong.

The "ROM PowerPC Mac" directory contains ROMs with Open Firmware and where I disassembled and converted to Forth the Open Firmware part of the ROM. I've done the same for New World ROMs as well.

trag said:
Because the same ROM is used on the 7500/8500 there will be code in there for CHAOS/CONTROL I don't know if that could be causing an issue similar to the ATI chip code in the Gazelle.

I don't think so since my Power Mac 8600 is able to use the Sonnet Tempo Trio without a patch. While the 8500 and 8600 have different ROMs, the Open Firmware part is identical. That doesn't mean that there isn't a way for the 7500/8500/8600 to have the same problem as the Gazelle. It just means the problem doesn't occur in my case.

trag · Mar 3, 2023

Thank you for the information on NVRAM. Sounds like I was wasting my time swapping the chips, but I do enjoy soldering....

joevt said:
What's the pEX project?

Long thread here: https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/pex-rom-project.23568/

pEX was coincident in time with the PM G3. The pEX project was scrapped very close to release. Seed machines were already distributed. Various folks had machines with complete hardware but no ROM modules. After way too many years we copied the ROM onto modules we had fabricated. The X100, X500, X600, G3, ANS and pEX all use the same ROM module, although the G3 module takes a 3.3V supply by using pins that were unused on the others. Obviously, the ROM code is different but the physical modules were the same.

joevt said:
The Macintosh ROM archive on Macintosh Garden has most of the Old World Power Mac ROMs.

It takes some massaging to get a ROM dump into useful format for putting on ROM (Flash) chips. Let me rephrase -- ROMs for PPC machines take some massaging. On the 68K machines, you could take a ROM dump, de-interleave it in four parts and stick it on four X8 storage chips, no problem.

On PPC machines, the ROM dump needs to have the byte order reversed for each grouping of 8 bytes.

Now it's not that hard to write a routine that will swallow a file and spit out reordered bytes, but I am just not motivated to be asoftware guy, so I like copies of t he ROM I already have stored, or ones that I extracted straight from existing ROM chips, so no massaging necessary.

Unfortunately, in the case of the G3, Apple used 32 bit wide mask ROMs, so there's not much choice but to dump the ROM, deinterleave it and reverse the byte order as needed.

joevt said:
I don't think so since my Power Mac 8600 is able to use the Sonnet Tempo Trio without a patch. While the 8500 and 8600 have different ROMs, the Open Firmware part is identical. That doesn't mean that there isn't a way for the 7500/8500/8600 to have the same problem as the Gazelle. It just means the problem doesn't occur in my case.

You won't see a problem on your 8600 unless you have two levels of PPB.

I would be happy to loan you an S900 board and power supply adapter at some time in the indefinite future, if you're interested. I don't have much time for the hobby right now, and the S900 boards are in the attic. I'm also finding that it's time to recap them, so the barriers of little time, attic and need to recap before it's really useful are obstacles that push any such project into the indefinite future. Sigh.

Also, I think I was misremembering about it freezing at the black screen. I think it freezes later, but it's just been too long. I really wish I could find the old SuperMacs postings.

While the S900 used AT-style Power Supply connectors, it actually used an ATX style supply electrically, so an ATX PS to S900 adapter cable is easy enough and the board is in an ATX form factor.

CircuitBored · Mar 3, 2023

trag said:
I would be happy to loan you an S900 board and power supply adapter at some time in the indefinite future, if you're interested.

I was going to start looking into the S900's issues more closely but, as is often the way with me, it has completely failed and will no longer do anything besides an extremely feeble quarter of a boot chime. Hopefully I can coax it back into life once I finally finish setting my workshop back up.

Murphy's law notwithstanding, it's very interesting to read more about all of this and the various ways it affects these similarish machines.

joevt · Mar 4, 2023

trag said:
Long thread here: https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/pex-rom-project.23568/

pEX was coincident in time with the PM G3. The pEX project was scrapped very close to release. Seed machines were already distributed. Various folks had machines with complete hardware but no ROM modules. After way too many years we copied the ROM onto modules we had fabricated.

Interesting. Found one new ROM revision (077d.39b7) for the Power Express in that thread. It has a valid checksum (the checksum is only for the first 3MB). The later revision 077d.39f1 does not seem to have a valid dump anywhere.

Code:

cd "/Volumes/Work/Open Firmware and Name Registry"

romchecksum () {
	# Ben Boldt's Mac ROM Checksum Verifier
	# https://web.archive.org/web/20180217090913/https://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/projects/checksum/
	local therom="$1"
	perl -E '
		$ck = 0;
		$bytesRead = read (STDIN, $buffer, 4);
		$i = 4;
		while ($bytesRead = read (STDIN, $buffer, 2) && $i < 3145728) {
			$num = unpack 'n', $buffer;
		  	$ck += $num;
		  	$i += 2;
		} 
		printf("%08x\n", $ck & 0xffffffff);
	' < "$therom"
}

IFS=$'\n'
for therom in $(find . \( -size 1M -o -size 2M -o -size 3M -o -size 4M -o -size 5M -o -size 6M \) -not -path "*.src/*"); do
	echo $(
		romsize=$(stat -f "%z" "$therom")
		thebytes=$(dd if="$therom" bs=32 count=1 2> /dev/null | xxd -p)
		checksum="$(romchecksum "$therom")"
		printf "%s.%s %dMiB %s " "${thebytes:16:4}" "${thebytes:36:4}" $((romsize / 1024 / 1024)) "${thebytes:0:8}"
		[[ $checksum == ${thebytes:0:8} ]] && printf "         √ " || printf  "${checksum} x "
		md5 -q "$therom"
	) '"'"$therom"'"'
done | sort

077d.39b7 4MiB 4604518f          √ 0a3077fcb1218da339b038712a34d9db "./ROM Apple/PowerExpress/TriPEx.ROM"
077d.39f1 3MiB 46001f1b 46021e8b x 5e0f52e66117fb29dba9d7031c80f1ff "./ROM Apple/#1 mac-rom-archive-20110819/46001F1B - Power Mac 9700 Prototype (bad dump).ROM"
077d.39f1 3MiB 46001f1b 46021e8b x 5e0f52e66117fb29dba9d7031c80f1ff "./ROM Apple/PowerExpress/9700_archive_bad_dump.ROM"
077d.39f1 4MiB 46001f1b 46021e8b x 296558a210dfb961ff2b1b7495d2de84 "./ROM Apple/#4 Power Express (9700 Prototype)/test2orig.ROM"
077d.39f1 4MiB 46001f1b 46021e8b x 296558a210dfb961ff2b1b7495d2de84 "./ROM PowerPC Mac/ROM Power Express 2/ROMs/test2orig.ROM"
077d.39f1 4MiB 46001f1b 46021e8b x 58b8a8fadd5cc5bec6c3f8100feaceb4 "./ROM Apple/#4 Power Express (9700 Prototype)/test1digi.ROM"
077d.39f1 4MiB 46001f1b 46021e8b x 58b8a8fadd5cc5bec6c3f8100feaceb4 "./ROM PowerPC Mac/ROM Power Express 1/ROMs/test1digi.ROM"
077d.39f1 4MiB 46001f1b 46021e8b x a42b0536b6a741d8208a5202d3785e7d "./ROM Apple/PowerExpress/Digibarn/SIMM/Rom-grabber/ROM-image 01"

The ROMs are physically 4MB total and have data in all 4MB, but the memory map for the last 1MB comes from different chips (PLCC chips) in the Power Express? That would mean you can't see the last 1MB from a running Power Express. The dumps for the 1MB PLCC chips is I guess the Open Firmware 2.0a9 or 2.3 dumps. There appears to be one good dump of each of those versions of Open Firmware:

Code:

file1="./www.jkalittle.co.uk/OF 2.0a9/even.bin"
file2="./www.jkalittle.co.uk/OF 2.0a9/odd.bin"
# good dump

file1="./www.jkalittle.co.uk/OF_2_3/even.bin"
file2="./www.jkalittle.co.uk/OF_2_3/odd.bin"
# bad dump (all bytes have bit 7 set)

file1="./www.jkalittle.co.uk/OF2_3_dump2/even.bin"
file2="./www.jkalittle.co.uk/OF2_3_dump2/odd.bin"
# bad dump

file1="./www.jkalittle.co.uk/OF_2_3_dump3/even.bin"
file2="./www.jkalittle.co.uk/OF_2_3_dump3/odd.bin"
# good dump

# merge the even and odd bytes of the OF dumps
xxd "$file1" > /tmp/file1xxd.txt
xxd "$file2" > /tmp/file2xxd.txt
xxd -g 4 -c 4 "$file1" | sed -E '/^(........): (........).*/s//\1a \2/' > /tmp/file1.txt
xxd -g 4 -c 4 "$file2" | sed -E '/^(........): (........).*/s//\1b \2/' > /tmp/file2.txt
sort -m /tmp/file1.txt /tmp/file2.txt | sed -E '/........../s///' | xxd -p -r > "${file1/even/full}"
xxd "${file1/even/full}" > "${file1/even.bin/full.txt}"
bbedit "${file1/even.bin/full.txt}"

The two good 1MB dumps match the last 1MB of the 4MB revision 077d.39f1 dumps and I've already disassembled and converted to Forth the Open Firmware parts of those.

Code:

dd if="./ROM Power Express 2/ROMs/test2orig.ROM" bs=1M skip=3 > "./ROM Power Express 2/ROMs/test2orig_plcc.ROM"
dd if="./ROM Power Express 1/ROMs/test1digi.ROM" bs=1M skip=3 > "./ROM Power Express 1/ROMs/test1orig_plcc.ROM"

1f1790d0e888d2a46543577a97c352fe "./ROM Apple/PowerExpress/www.jkalittle.co.uk/OF_2_3_dump3/full.bin"
1f1790d0e888d2a46543577a97c352fe "./ROM PowerPC Mac/ROM Power Express 1/ROMs/test1orig_plcc.ROM"
9728d9a3c6777ffbb40f35d21e0c4c93 "./ROM Apple/PowerExpress/www.jkalittle.co.uk/OF 2.0a9/full.bin"
9728d9a3c6777ffbb40f35d21e0c4c93 "./ROM PowerPC Mac/ROM Power Express 2/ROMs/test2orig_plcc.ROM"

trag said:
You won't see a problem on your 8600 unless you have two levels of PPB.

Maybe I can test that with a Thunderbolt PCI expansion chassis connected to a Thunderbolt PCIe add-in card connected to a PCI to PCIe bridge, but first I need to write some Open Firmware code to enable the Thunderbolt card (hope the open source Linux and UEFI code has enough info). It might be easier to connect a PCI card to a PCIe to PCI bridge and connect that to a PCI to PCIe bridge. It would certainly add multiple levels of PPB but it wouldn't be exactly the same.

nunes.hr · May 21, 2023

After hours of battle, I finally got my Sonnet Tango 2.0 to work on my TAM. Thank you to everyone involved.

nunes.hr · May 21, 2023

Hey guys. So, when I turn on the computer, the sonnet is not working. After running the Tango2.0new.sit and rebooting the machine, it works again. If I turn it off and then back on, it stops working. Is it related to the PRAM battery some how? I don't have one installed.

Phipli · May 21, 2023

nunes.hr said:
Hey guys. So, when I turn on the computer, the sonnet is not working. After running the Tango2.0new.sit and rebooting the machine, it works again. If I turn it off and then back on, it stops working. Is it related to the PRAM battery some how? I don't have one installed.

Yeah, the patch is stored in battery backed memory. It won't stay fixed without a battery.

nunes.hr · May 21, 2023

Not a problem, time to get a battery! Thank you!!!!!

phlogios · May 24, 2023

Apologies for the silly question, but I tried running the firmware hack thing posted by @Phipli and now I have to undo it - how do I do that? After running the hack, my PowerMac 6500 can't load extensions if a monitor isn't connected to the Rage 2 card, and with a fresh new install of OS 9.1 it can't activate the ethernet card - OS 9 helper can't run either.

Phipli · May 24, 2023

phlogios said:
Apologies for the silly question, but I tried running the firmware hack thing posted by @Phipli and now I have to undo it - how do I do that? After running the hack, my PowerMac 6500 can't load extensions if a monitor isn't connected to the Rage 2 card, and with a fresh new install of OS 9.1 it can't activate the ethernet card - OS 9 helper can't run either.

Zap your PRAM - hold Cmd-Opt-P-R while powering on, listen for a second boot chime, release.

Not sure that all your issues are to do with the patch tbh.

phlogios · May 24, 2023

Thank you. Zapping the PRAM solved the issue with the ethernet card, and probably the extension problem as well but I don't know because I don't have radeon drivers on my fresh install.
Did anyone ever solve the problem of the PowerMac 6500 not being able to run 3D games for more than 30 seconds when using a dedicated graphics card? I've been struggling with this problem for 2 years now and I am not getting anywhere. I was hoping that the firmware hack would help but it did not.

Phipli · May 24, 2023

phlogios said:
Thank you. Zapping the PRAM solved the issue with the ethernet card, and probably the extension problem as well but I don't know because I don't have radeon drivers on my fresh install.
Did anyone ever solve the problem of the PowerMac 6500 not being able to run 3D games for more than 30 seconds when using a dedicated graphics card? I've been struggling with this problem for 2 years now and I am not getting anywhere. I was hoping that the firmware hack would help but it did not.

Which patch did you apply, there are several through this thread. It also sounds like you don't need the patch if you have a video card an ethernet card? The patch was for people using multi-function combo cards.

This was the patch that worked :

The Great Gazelle PCI Hack Thread, Part 2

Yeah, there was a bug in my emulation code so I was wrong about OF 1.0.5 not probing a nested bridge. But I still see a limit: it won't probe a doubly nested bridge. FF831B60: /bandit@F2000000 FF83F048: /pci-bridge@E FF83FCB0: /pci-bridge@0 FF8408F0: /pci-bridge@0 FF841558...

68kmla.org

Phipli · May 24, 2023

phlogios said:
extension problem as well but I don't know because I don't have radeon drivers on my fresh install.

The onboard Rage II card works with an Apple supplied driver that installs with the OS on that computer and doesn't need Radeon drivers, it isn't a Radeon?

phlogios · May 24, 2023

I created a new thread for my issue: https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?thr...0-if-a-dedicated-graphics-card-is-used.44411/
I indeed tested the patch you linked, it was suggested by you in a youtube comment

It was a long shot that unfortunately didn't help.
And yes the onboard Rage 2 works fine by itself, but it causes issues with dedicated graphics cards, such as the Radeon 7000 that I currently have installed. Same issue with other cards I have tried. I am yet to try Voodoo2 - but that discussion can be continued in the other thread.

Timtheloon · Sep 16, 2023

Hello Peeps,

I have a Power Macintosh 5500 which I'm looking to hopefully get a Combo PCI card to work USB2.0/FW/Ethernet, but I'm a Noob to Open firmware

I've used Maczip to unzip the 6500 Bridge FW Patch.zip and it unzips 2 files:

656500 Bridge FW Patch
Xt6500 Bridge FW Patch

but if i try and start them I get an error which I will upload a pic of shortly

the PCI card displays
Card Name: pci-bridge
card model: not available
Card ROM: not available
CArd revision: 21
Card Vendor ID: 3388

Phipli · Sep 16, 2023

Timtheloon said:
Hello Peeps,

I have a Power Macintosh 5500 which I'm looking to hopefully get a Combo PCI card to work USB2.0/FW/Ethernet, but I'm a Noob to Open firmware

I've used Maczip to unzip the 6500 Bridge FW Patch.zip and it unzips 2 files:

656500 Bridge FW Patch
Xt6500 Bridge FW Patch

but if i try and start them I get an error which I will upload a pic of shortly

View attachment 62090

the PCI card displays
Card Name: pci-bridge
card model: not available
Card ROM: not available
CArd revision: 21
Card Vendor ID: 3388

View attachment 62091

Make sure you are using the program from https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/the-great-gazelle-pci-hack-thread-part-2.38360/post-467844

That error and garbled filename suggest something isn't right... It is likely at your end as the program has been used by many people.

cheesestraws · Sep 16, 2023

IIRC, -39 is an unexpected end of file. Sounds like it's got garbled in unzipping, or something.

Timtheloon · Sep 16, 2023

Thanks I will do a fresh install of Mac OS and try again I've only just started using this Mac I have discovered why I wasn't seeing open firmware when I held command + option + O + F, XPostFacto 4 helped me out with that by letting me set the input device has my keyboard and output via the monitor.

I can't seem to go higher than OS 9.1 even if I use OS9 helper I did manage to to it on my Performa 5400 once but I did a fresh install and couldn't get it to do it again so did I just fluke it that one time or should I be able to do it?

I got the file from the location @Phipli mentioned originally and I downloaded it again and still had the same results I'll let you know how the clean install goes

Update No change with a fresh install of mac OS9.1

one question what files should I expect to see when I unzip because @Phipli mentions the garbled file names?

Phipli · Sep 16, 2023

Timtheloon said:
one question what files should I expect to see when I unzip because @Phipli mentions the garbled file names?

One file for a start. But the filename should start "6500" not... The two things you are seeing.

Timtheloon · Sep 16, 2023

Thanks, I seem to have an issue with Maczip I cant seem to just drop the Zip file on the icon or on an alias of Maczip, it just moves the file to the same location. I think this is where my problem lies because I'm having to use the maczip gui to extract it.

If I bring the zip file over to the Stuffit expander Alias the icon goes dark has expected and when I let go it unpack it but not how Maczip would, so I'm trying to see what I'm not doing correctly

The Great Gazelle PCI Hack Thread, Part 2

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