I very much appreciate your work, Darth, as it certainly made for a much better experience for me on my Mini. I'm not asking You[/] personally to put any further time and effort into it, as others here can probably refine the code later. (My Mini, and a second one currently in transit to me cost about $100 each, the first one because I thought I was getting a 1.5GHz model but the seller lied, and the second one so I actually end up with a 1.5GHz model - As such I intend to put them to serious work in the studio here running software synths and the like.) Keep in mind that the unmodified 'stock' ATI drivers caused the same problem anyway.
As it stands, my workaround is to boot the Mini to OS 9 with the ATI extensions off first so the machine detects the monitor on DVI and stores the working mode, then reboot with the extensions back on to gain back the acceleration. This sequence preserves the properly timed 1920x1080/60Hz mode from the first boot indefinitely, presumably, unless I switch resolutions or disconnect/reconnect the monitor with the system up. The monitor, on DVI, is detected correctly by name too in SwitchRes and the Monitors control panel - "W2243" (an LG model). The only reason I would have for booting once to OS X would be to make VGA work on the following re-boot - DVI works without this trick.
I presume the 'mechanics' of creating custom timings for OS 9 is complicated given that it was never a feature of any OS 9 or earlier utility that I'm aware of. It would be great if we could do it, essentially back-porting the function from SwitchResX to SwitchRes, but I don't have any idea of the feasibility. Maybe some of the coders here know enough to comment.
One thing I didn't think of would be to try the 'NDRV's from the other 3 variations of the R9200, it's a long shot but maybe the one for the retail card would work.
I'll gave it a shot sometime this weekend and see if any of them work with my setup.
One odd outstanding issue for me is at some point one of ELN's ROMs made the R9200 show the NTSC modes as well as the modes for my display. I've seen some others having this issue too, I'm not sure if it is related to the display that is connected or it's a Rev. of the Mini itself?
The Mini did support NTSC with an adapter Apple sold. I assume the adapter had a custom EDID logic like the one for the G5 for nVidia cards, maybe the same adapter.
I had the adapter for the G5, it connected to the DVI port of an OEM card, and had S-Video and Composite. With a flashed GF 6600 GT it would enable the mini din breakout box if plugged to one of the DVI ports. The 6600 breakout box had S-Video, Composite, and Component. The Component ports supported HDTV up to 1920x1080, however I was never able to get it to work correct, I'd either get Black and White or a blue/red tent with no green, or something like that.
I conferred with the author of NVTV for Linux, and figured the registers and found the bit that needed to be set for the green channel, however setting it would result in the TV losing sync.
I looked up the registers in Windows connected to the same card and TV, but it only told me what I already knew, the bit for the green channel was not being set on the Mac.
I never did figure the issue.
With the GF 6200 Atri Itra did a little special logic in the FCode, and it could enable the TV encoder without the need for the Apple adapter.
Anyway, I'll see if I can cook up any working 'NDRV's from the other R9200's and report back.
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Topic: Mac OS 9 booting on: Mac mini G4 (Detailed Posts) (Read 744713 times)