Dual 1.8 g5

[CompactMacLover]

Snagged a dual 1.8 g5 at the local surplus today. Needs ram and a video card, Was thinking of replacing my p4 htpc with it. How are the g5s

 

[beachycove]

You could always keep your Compact collection in it.

(I like mine, but the size is a big drawback.)

 

[IIfx]

If its a PCI-X G5, fast. Run a little hot but its not too bad if your house is cold inside.

I would not dump more than 150 dollars into it if you got it for nearly free. They all have a defect when running 10.4 where they make faint chirping sounds.

An Intel Mac of early age would serve better for the purpose, it is poor at multimedia now. (But still better than a G4)

 

[CompactMacLover]

It's a pci x g5. Got it for a good price. Can I use a standard Mac pci video card in it

If. It ends up being more trouble to fix I'll build my hackintosh into it

It's a heavy sucker

 

[IIfx]

You would get much better performance using the AGP slot on the motherboard.

Get the default AGP card that came with it, it should not cost too much. If you want something better, flash a card. AGP gives you Quartz Extreme which means faster GUI and Video render.

 

[CompactMacLover]

I have an AGP Card out of a Digital Audio 733mhz G4.. Would that do the trick

 

[LCGuy]

If its the original it won't work (as from memory the DAs used 2X or maybe 4X AGP)...if its an 8X AGP card it should work.

 

[CompactMacLover]

Well I can't find a video card in my price range. Looks like I'll be gutting the case. Oh well I'll get at least what I paid for it

 

[mcdermd]

You should have no problems flashing a PC BIOS ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, NVidia GeForce 5200, 5500 or 6200 to a PowerPC ROM for use in that G5.

 

[IIfx]

Yes the PC versions of the cards are dirt cheap. Just need to find an AGP PC to flash them with. (should not be hard)

 

[mcdermd]

I keep meaning to try this if I ever get the chance, but here is a way to flash cards using a modified firmware update package. Not as much help if you only have an AGP card but interesting nonetheless.

Alexandre Boeglin[/url]"]How to flash a PC 4870 for a Mac Pro, using only Mac OS X
This solution is so simple it will blow your mind away. Twice.

I have tested it on my 2006 Mac Pro, using a Sapphire 4870 with 512MB VRAM (early model, based on ATI's reference design). The machine is running Snow Leopard 10.6.1.

The test might be a little biased, as I originally installed Snow Leopard using the 4870 card. I only reflashed it with its original non-EFI BIOS for the purpose of this test.

You'll need the iMac Graphics Update 1.0.2 and Pacifist.

First, mount the graphics update image and use Pacifist to open it. You'll need to extract two files from here, using administrator privileges: ATIROMFlasher.kext and ATIFacelessFlash.app.

After extracting them, we'll first need to make sure the kext is able to load. Open a Terminal, and run

sudo kextutil -nt ATIROMFlasher.kext

to check whatever problems it might have.

On my system, it complained about authentication failures, and also showed a few warnings. The warnings can be ignored, but the auth issues have to be fixed, using those two commands:

sudo chown -R root:wheel ATIROMFlasher.kext
sudo chmod -R 644 ATIROMFlasher.kext

Then, we'll remove the iMac firmwares from the archive:

sudo rm ATIFacelessFlash.app/Contents/Resources/*IMG

and add the correct firmware to the flash utility:

sudo cp 4870.ROM ATIFacelessFlash.app/Contents/Resources/

Note: removing the other firmwares is only important if you have other ATI cards in your mac. When ran, the ATIFacelessFlash application looks for all files in the Resources directory, tries to find a match in your PCI devices, and when one is found, initiates the flashing. So it could "harm" one of your other ATI cards. And I don't know how it behaves with a 4870X2 card, *IF* it is seen by the system as two cards with the same ID, *BUT* each need a different firmware for the card to work fine. From a quick disassembly, I'd say that only the first one would be flashed.

Now, time to plug the PC 4870 card in your machine. I had it in the 1st PCI Excodess slot, with no display connected, and the 7300 GT that originally came with my Mac in the 3rd PCI Excodess slot, driving my display. I don't know if MacOS X can boot without any graphics card, but if it does, you could also use ssh instead of a second card, if you have a second machine available.

Restart your mac, and flash the card:

sudo kextload ATIROMFlasher.kext

(loads the interface to the card)

sudo open ATIFacelessFlash.app

(flashes the card. The app should appear in your Dock, wait for it to complete),

sudo kextunload ATIROMFlasher.kext

(unloads the interface).

Then reboot once more, and voilà, your 4870 is now a Mac card. No need to boot a FreeDOS CD, no need to create a FAT partition on your disks.