flashing a quadro 4 900xgl...

[refinery]

(you can skip to the ----------- if you just want the tl;dr)

so for quite a while i have been using an "unsupported" ATI 9650 in my MDD. it mostly worked... i was primarily counting on the brute force of the GPU to overcome the fact that it was not fully accelerated and for the most part, it worked like a champ.

i recently decided to re-wire my home studio and change some things which now meant the MDD was going to be going into the monitors via VGA instead of DVI. I figured, no problem, should be fine. Couldnt be more wrong. the 9650 doesnt like driving dual analog 1920x1200 *at all*. I tried about every kind of adapter and cable I could find, thinking it was a problem with the cables. nope, the problem is actually the 9650. it just completely chokes on OS9 with VGA and dual 1920x1200. works fine in X, but 9, even with all ATI extensions disabled, just freaks out and wont work right at all.

I Swapped out a 9000 from my OSX G4, and it worked mostly, except with my formac ADC-DVI adapter, the output is green when using a DVI-VGA adapter. Not sure if that's a problem with the adapter, my monitor, or the card. too many variables to troubleshoot, so, i figured i might as well just get the best of the best and picked up a quadro4 900XGL. Dual DVI (which I would like to keep, as i never know when something down the line will require a rewire and having DVI makes it more flexible... this was the primary reason I was using the 9650 to begin with as it was a dual-DVI model) But I have had a ton of problems getting this card just to play nice with certain tools... obviously its not going to work out of the box but I am having problems doing things like just dumping the ROM with the dump utility which has so far 100% caused a KP on every run. need some clarification on a few points so here we are...

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I have had nothing but problems since then. I wanted to inquire with you fine folks with some questions which may be obvious but for whatever reason isnt with a specific post or forum thread.A few questions:

1. what OS do you need to run the nVidia ROM dumper? I have tried 10.4 and 10.2, and neither works. 10.2 doesnt do anything (app never starts) and 10.4 causes the machine to KP. This is also after booting in safe mode, as under normal boot the machine goes to a blue screen after the Apple icon and never finishes booting up. Does it need 10.3? I ran out of CDrs after burning 10.2 so wasnt able to test.

2. the ROM maker utility, as outlined in this thread:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,4329.0/topicseen.html
I just feed it a dumped ROM from the card and its good to go? does the card need to be in the machine at the time its being run? do the nvidia extensions need to be loaded or is safe boot fine? I cant boot the machine normally with this card installed, only safe boot works.

I want to understand if I am following this process right. Years ago I flashed many ATI cards so the process is generally understood but the particulars of nVidia are new to me, so please correct me if I am wrong here:
 A - extract original ROM either on PC or on G4 using ROM dumper for non-supported cards (looks like PC here since ROM dumper causes KP on my system?)
 B - use ROM maker utility on OSX to take dumped ROM and process it for Mac. Does the nVidia need to be in the machine when this tool is run?
 C - place card into PC and flash with modified ROM (what tools do I use on the PC for this? Seems only utilities included here are for Mac)

ive verified this card has a 258 ID so it should work with the ROM utility... just looking for some clarification here on some things.

[refinery]

well, tried 10.3 today and while the tools run without crashing, they generate no output.

i ended up ordering a cheap AGP motherboard off ebay, should be here in a few days. will try with that.

[macStuff]

let us know how it works out...
has anyone had any success with an XGL card working on mac os9?
did darth crack that nut? i forget

[refinery]

did darth crack that nut? i forget

seems so, based off this thread:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,4398.0.html

but there was some conflicting info there which was why i was asking more questions in this thread, specifically Darth's first post in the thread:

"and I put it in my Quicksilver, with out flashing it, and loaded the ROM for the Gainwood Dual DVI card onto it."

and that's what confused me because as far as I was aware you couldnt flash ROMs onto a PC card in the Mac, it has to be done in a PC. so i was curious if there were other tools besides NVFLash/NV Rom dumper that i was unaware of.

i definitely want to extract the existing ROM first before doing anything, but, once I do my plan is to try out the OF loading trick first and see if that works with the ROMs.

[darthnVader]

I loaded the ROM from a file in OF.

There is a way to dump the ROM of a PC nVidia card under OS X, but it requires an OF script that has been lost to time and the interwebs. I'm working on trying to find it again, when I do we'll be able to dump and flash nVidia FCode ROM's without the need for a PC.

As it stands now, you need a PC with an AGP slot to dump and flash. There is no need to have the card in your Mac when you run the ROM Maker.

The Quadro900XGL won't drive a digital display from one of the DVI ports, but DVI+VGA works.

Also, OS 9 fully supports this card, however OS X requires you add the device ID to one of the nVidia Kexts.

It's better to use the Gainwood Dual DVI rom with the Rom Maker for this card, as the ROM Maker does not properly phrase the card in Name Space. It won't show up in ASP as nVidia Quadro4 XGL, so it's better for it to show up as GeForce4 Ti.

Purely superficial, but one thing to be aware of. One day I'll hand edit the ROM so the card show up as a Quadro, but it's low on my list of things to do, as the card loads the Quadro driver because of it's device ID, not the card name in name space.

[refinery]

thanks for answering my questions darth, i suspected you might have meant the OF load but wasnt sure. i was aware of the no dual DVI thing, im actually using DVI-VGA cables on each output due to not being able to find quality VGA cables (original plan was just using some dvi-vga adapters but went with cables when i got a good deal on them)


so far though, this project has been a disaster... got the board loaded up last night, immediately noticed glitching and weird output from the quadro when loaded on PC... sure signs of a card on the way out. green lines, image shifting around... not good.

then today, the AGP motherboard i bought off ebay to do this... died. nothing. no fans, no power, no display, nothing.

feeling pretty discouraged at the moment. think im gonna go have some drinks and think this through a bit.

[darthnVader]

thanks for answering my questions darth, i suspected you might have meant the OF load but wasnt sure. i was aware of the no dual DVI thing, im actually using DVI-VGA cables on each output due to not being able to find quality VGA cables (original plan was just using some dvi-vga adapters but went with cables when i got a good deal on them)


so far though, this project has been a disaster... got the board loaded up last night, immediately noticed glitching and weird output from the quadro when loaded on PC... sure signs of a card on the way out. green lines, image shifting around... not good.

then today, the AGP motherboard i bought off ebay to do this... died. nothing. no fans, no power, no display, nothing.

feeling pretty discouraged at the moment. think im gonna go have some drinks and think this through a bit.

Sounds like your card is on the way out, hope you didn't pay Ebay prices for it, I've got a dead one here myself.

[refinery]

Sounds like your card is on the way out, hope you didn't pay Ebay prices for it, I've got a dead one here myself.

the seller actually gave me a full refund within 15 minutes, and i dont even have to return the card!

[refinery]

i ended up giving up on this for the meantime as many different contributing factors came together to make it more hassle than I have time to deal with right now. the AGP board i ordered died, i cant get OS9 to play nice on the G4 im using to set this up, and then finally i discovered that the jumbo heatsink i was going to use on it wont fit inside an MDD case... heatpipes stick out too far. so this is on the back burner for now.

thanks for everyone's help in the meantime.