Looking for Formac ProMedia 40 ROM Rip

[Phipli]

Morning folks.

Does anyone have a rip of the S3 Virge based Formac ProMedia 40 ROM (or the ProMedia 20, and 80 if they made one!)? Or do you have a card and are willing to extract the ROM?

The card should be capable of RAVE 3D and run a few 3D textured games, although it isn't the fastest. It would be an interesting project to see if we can flash a PC card. I have one on the way (hopefully it works, I'll test it in a PC before experimenting).

The card looks like this :



I'd also be interested if you have any other type of Mac card with an S3 Virge or Virge DX chipset.

 

[Phipli]

Cross linking :

Post in thread 'Looking for: Radius Thunder 3D driver version 1.0.7'

Post in thread 'Looking for: Radius Thunder 3D driver version 1.0.7'

Yesterday at 12:13 PM

Morning @stynx are you able to rip the ROM from a ProMedia 40 for me?

I'm curious if I can flash a generic PC card to work as one and get some cheap RAVE 3D PCI fun. I have one on the way.

It's getting harder to find interesting Mac cards for reasonable prices, but there isn't much love for the S3 Virge

Did any of the Formac cards use the Virge DX?

Everyone else - same goes for anyone else reading if you have a ProMedia 40 or a 20?

That would not be very fun. The Formac Virge driver is not well implemented for Rave and has a lot of bugs.
I have flashed a PC Virge (325)...

• stynx

 

[joevt]

Does anyone have a rip of the S3 Virge based Formac ProMedia 40 ROM (or the ProMedia 20, and 80 if they made one!)? Or do you have a card and are willing to extract the ROM?

The card should be capable of RAVE 3D and run a few 3D textured games, although it isn't the fastest. It would be an interesting project to see if we can flash a PC card. I have one on the way (hopefully it works, I'll test it in a PC before experimenting).

The card looks like this :

View attachment 98094

I'd also be interested if you have any other type of Mac card with an S3 Virge or Virge DX chipset.

Macintosh Garden has CDs from Formac containing many ROMs or drivers. Just search for Formac.

I think this one from February 2002 has 64 ROMs for 17 different products:
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/formac-drivers-version-2011-01-05-archive
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/formac-022001

This one is from August 2002:
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/formac-082002

They have some differences. August adds replaces GA12-ROM 2.6.2 with GA12-ROM 2.6.4.

ProMedia 40 is GA6 with PCI vendor/device IDs 5333:5631
List of S3 PCI ids:
https://admin.pci-ids.ucw.cz/read/PC/5333

GA3 has PCI vendor/device IDs 5333:88F0 (ProVision 2)

I don't see any other ROMs with vendor ID 5333.

PCI class, vendor, device, ROM name

010000 1000 000F SA1-ROM
010000 10CD 2300 SA3 -Rom

030000 5333 5631 GA6-ROM
030000 5333 88F0 GA3-ROM

038000 104C 3D07 GA8-ROM

038000 105D 2309 GA4-ROM
038000 105D 2309 GA4_8-ROM
038000 105D 2339 GA5-ROM
038000 105D 493D GA10-ROM
038000 105D 493D GA10MT-ROM
038000 105D 493D GA7-ROM
038000 105D 493D ProFormance II Light
038000 105D 5348 #9 Imagine:4
038000 105D 5348 GA11-ROM

038000 3D3D 000A GA12-ROM
038000 3D3D 000A ProFormance III
038000 3D3D 000A ProFormance III ROM

These ROMs have a pong game for Open Firmware:

GA5-ROM 1.5.6:CS_C852
GA5-ROM 1.5.7:CS_7087
GA5-ROM 1.8.0:CS_805D
GA6-ROM 1.2.6:CS_2876
GA7-ROM 1.6.5:CS_2670
GA8-ROM 1.7.0:CS_7265
GA8-ROM 1.7.2:CS_F187
GA8-ROM 1.7.6:CS_7277
GA8-ROM 1.8.0:CS_F548
GA10-ROM 1.6.4
GA10-ROM 1.6.9
GA10-ROM 1.7.1
GA10-ROM 1.7.2
GA10-ROM 1.7.3
GA10-ROM 1.7.4
GA10-ROM 1.8.0
GA10MT-ROM 1.6.4
GA10MT-ROM 1.7.1
ProFormance II Light v1.76

 

[stynx]

I have bought an original Formac ProMedia 20 in 1997 for my Power Macintosh 7200 to use a Belinea 15" Monitor besides the 14" Apple AV monitor. The Rom on that card was revision 1.0.6 which i later upgraded to 1.2.6 that i got from Formac for cost of shipping. I even upgraded the VRam from 2Mb to 4Mb to get moe colors in higher resolutions. Back then i could not get the 3D acceleration to work because the 4.5.0 Version of the GA control panel misplaces the 3D extension in the wrong directory.
When requesting the updated Rom, an engineer from Formac told me that the Virge could easily be overclocked by changing some bytes in the rom. I never bothered since 2D was fast enough. Sadly i lost the addresses for the bytes to change in the rom. I remember that by rule of thumb i was told that if the Vram was
35ns: >= 80MHz
40ns: >= 70MHz
45ns: >= 60MHz
The technician said that they did have a select Virge tested at 100MHz in the lab with 25ns VRam but that typically 65MHz was the limit on commercial cards.

-Jonas

 

[Phipli]

I have bought an original Formac ProMedia 20 in 1997 for my Power Macintosh 7200 to use a Belinea 15" Monitor besides the 14" Apple AV monitor. The Rom on that card was revision 1.0.6 which i later upgraded to 1.2.6 that i got from Formac for cost of shipping. I even upgraded the VRam from 2Mb to 4Mb to get moe colors in higher resolutions. Back then i could not get the 3D acceleration to work because the 4.5.0 Version of the GA control panel misplaces the 3D extension in the wrong directory.
When requesting the updated Rom, an engineer from Formac told me that the Virge could easily be overclocked by changing some bytes in the rom. I never bothered since 2D was fast enough. Sadly i lost the addresses for the bytes to change in the rom. I remember that by rule of thumb i was told that if the Vram was
35ns: >= 80MHz
40ns: >= 70MHz
45ns: >= 60MHz
The technician said that they did have a select Virge tested at 100MHz in the lab with 25ns VRam but that typically 65MHz was the limit on commercial cards.

-Jonas

I can probably find the ROM location. The registers of interest are SR10 and SR11 to enter the scaling factors for MCLK and SR15 to enable it.

Annoyingly most of the PC cards have much lower VRAM speeds. Cost benefits are eroded when you start having to buy a card and then buy faster VRAM for it. Perhaps for experimentation I can clock the card down.

The overpriced Formac card on eBay has 35ns VRAM.

Do you happen to know what the default memory clock frequency was on the Formac card?

What speed VRAM is soldered to yours?

 

[Phipli]

Macintosh Garden has CDs from Formac containing many ROMs or drivers. Just search for Formac.

I think this one from February 2002 has 64 ROMs for 17 different products:
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/formac-drivers-version-2011-01-05-archive
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/formac-022001

This one is from August 2002:
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/formac-082002

They have some differences. August adds replaces GA12-ROM 2.6.2 with GA12-ROM 2.6.4.

ProMedia 40 is GA6 with PCI vendor/device IDs 5333:5631
List of S3 PCI ids:
https://admin.pci-ids.ucw.cz/read/PC/5333

GA3 has PCI vendor/device IDs 5333:88F0 (ProVision 2)

I don't see any other ROMs with vendor ID 5333.

PCI class, vendor, device, ROM name

010000 1000 000F SA1-ROM
010000 10CD 2300 SA3 -Rom

030000 5333 5631 GA6-ROM
030000 5333 88F0 GA3-ROM

038000 104C 3D07 GA8-ROM

038000 105D 2309 GA4-ROM
038000 105D 2309 GA4_8-ROM
038000 105D 2339 GA5-ROM
038000 105D 493D GA10-ROM
038000 105D 493D GA10MT-ROM
038000 105D 493D GA7-ROM
038000 105D 493D ProFormance II Light
038000 105D 5348 #9 Imagine:4
038000 105D 5348 GA11-ROM

038000 3D3D 000A GA12-ROM
038000 3D3D 000A ProFormance III
038000 3D3D 000A ProFormance III ROM

These ROMs have a pong game for Open Firmware:

GA5-ROM 1.5.6:CS_C852
GA5-ROM 1.5.7:CS_7087
GA5-ROM 1.8.0:CS_805D
GA6-ROM 1.2.6:CS_2876
GA7-ROM 1.6.5:CS_2670
GA8-ROM 1.7.0:CS_7265
GA8-ROM 1.7.2:CS_F187
GA8-ROM 1.7.6:CS_7277
GA8-ROM 1.8.0:CS_F548
GA10-ROM 1.6.4
GA10-ROM 1.6.9
GA10-ROM 1.7.1
GA10-ROM 1.7.2
GA10-ROM 1.7.3
GA10-ROM 1.7.4
GA10-ROM 1.8.0
GA10MT-ROM 1.6.4
GA10MT-ROM 1.7.1
ProFormance II Light v1.76

Thanks @joevt - I forgot they shared their ROMs on the CDs. I was planning to rummage in the Drivers this weekend because I remember there is a resource that lists all the cards and their chipsets, but hadn't got to that yet.

 

[Phipli]

This one is from August 2002:
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/formac-082002

I think that is the one I uploaded the other month

 

[Phipli]

Do you happen to know what the default memory clock frequency was on the Formac card?

Answered one of my own questions, looks like Formac ran their cards faster (60MHz) than most vendors even stock :



Well.... It's only a 20% overclock from stock, it might work

 

[joevt]

Which ROM is ProMedia 20?

If you want to make changes to the ROMs, then you'll want to look at the Forth code. You can retokenize changes into a new ROM with my OpenBIOSStuff.

I have a Open Firmware Extender 2.4 for Beige G3's that have Open Firmware 2.4. Open Firmware Extender loads Open Firmware patches and drivers from disk. It can include Option ROMs for PCI cards that don't have an Option ROM or if you want to override an Option ROM (because it's larger than the flash size or because you can't flash it). Open Firmware Extender 2.4 is discussed in the DingusPPC Discord server. I've included firmware for Formac GA12 card. I'm currently trying to include a patch for LBA48 support for Beige G3's in Open Firmware and Mac OS X. Mac OS 9 already supports LBA48. Open Firmware Extender should be able to include ndrv's for Mac OS 9 and kexts for Mac OS X. I've ported stuff from Open Firmware 4.9.6 (including LBA48 support and HFS+ support) to Open Firmware 2.4 and added some bug fixes and new commands (such as list-partitions). I'll need to add a preprocessor so I can create extenders for other versions of Open Firmware. The preprocessor will add commands similar to #if .. #endif to the scripts and Forth source files so they won't need to be completely duplicated for each version of Open Firmware.

 

[Phipli]

Which ROM is ProMedia 20?

Should be GA-6 : it is a 2MB version of the S3 Virge card.

The GA-3 one is the S3 Vision 986 (I have the Radius equivalent, but not the Formac one).

If you want to make changes to the ROMs, then you'll want to look at the Forth code. You can retokenize changes into a new ROM with my OpenBIOSStuff.

Bleh, I always forget that this era of stuff isn't just a machine code binary. That's a pain. It still might be easier to look for the three parameters that make 60 MHz near mentions of the registers needed to set them.

It can include Option ROMs for PCI cards that don't have an Option ROM or if you want to override an Option ROM (because it's larger than the flash size or because you can't flash it).

That sounds useful for getting ATI Rage XL and LT cards running with less fuss, and some of the IDE cards with embedded flash.

Also nice for experiments without having to dismantle everything!

LBA48

That will be nice, it's a pain having to find small IDE disks when there are hundreds of 500GB disks for cheap on eBay.

I know this is probably a daft question, but is there a more comprehensive resource for OpenFirmware anywhere? All I have ever found are partial lists of common commands. I can navigate, modify NV stuff and poke around a bit, but I've never seen a "Learn how to make an OpenFirmware Forth Driver in 12 easy steps" book or anything similar.

Also, I'm getting strong "you need to go and grab one of your Beige G3's" vibes

 

[stynx]

Which ROM is ProMedia 20?

The ProMedia 20 and ProMedia 40 are the 2 and 4Mb Versions of the first Batch of cards (Rom version 1.0.6).
The ProMedia XX plus is a later version (like the one on eBay) with Rom version 1.2.6
I remember removing the additional VRam and buying a ProMedia 40 plus for cheap later on since the ProMedia 20 was having trouble with the additional 2Mb of VRam. The ProMedia was a nice card when you only used 2D. The Mac 7200/90 that i owned was too slow for any 3D anyways.

I have no idea what the main differences are but the later version of the cards but the rom works in both variants. The older card is much bigger and has options for TV-out and a tuner (i think). I think that the older cards may not have been as robust and maybe had problems.

ProMedia 20 (late 1996)


ProMedia 40 plus (1997)


-Jonas

 

[Phipli]

The ProMedia 20 and ProMedia 40 are the 2 and 4Mb Versions of the first Batch of cards (Rom version 1.0.6).
The ProMedia XX plus is a later version (like the one on eBay) with Rom version 1.2.6
I remember removing the additional VRam and buying a ProMedia 40 plus for cheap later on since the ProMedia 20 was having trouble with the additional 2Mb of VRam. The ProMedia was a nice card when you only used 2D. The Mac 7200/90 that i owned was too slow for any 3D anyways.

I have no idea what the main differences are but the later version of the cards but the rom works in both variants. The older card is much bigger and has options for TV-out and a tuner (i think). I think that the older cards may not have been as robust and maybe had problems.

ProMedia 20 (late 1996)
View attachment 98142

ProMedia 40 plus (1997)
View attachment 98143

-Jonas

Your photos are interesting - the older card has 45ns RAM and the newer one has 40ns. Like I mentioned the one on eBay has 35ns RAM

My ballpark maths is guessing that the performance is approximately 2500/(ns)=MHz,

That gives...
50ns = 50MHz
45ns = 55MHz
40ns = 62MHz
35ns = 71MHz

(This is just a guess based on common values fitted to PC cards being 50 and 45ns for a common range of 50 to 55MHz.)

I wonder if the issues with your older card are that the newer ROM version was overclocking your 45ns VRAM to achieve 60MHz? Perhaps the early cards were originally 55MHz? Something to investigate.

Shame the eBay card is not a sensible price - it is likely an overclocking beast for what it is, but for that much money you could get a much, much better card like a PC Radeon 7000 and flash it.

 

[stynx]

I think that the older ProMedia was 60MHz.

 

[Phipli]

I think that the older ProMedia was 60MHz.

Interesting - I thought the "Plus" models were speed bumped or have a faster rated DAC for higher resolutions. But I haven't found any documentation on the original ProMedia yet.