Author Topic: Do all OS 9-supported ATI video cards have flashable ROMs?  (Read 5261 times)

Offline MacOS Plus

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Do all OS 9-supported ATI video cards have flashable ROMs?
« on: September 18, 2016, 09:32:18 PM »
  This is something that's never been entirely clear to me for the various card models.  Right now I'm trying to sort out if the OEM Radeon 7000 PCI card is supposed to be flashable with the retail ROM update via their utility (under OS 9), or Graphiccelerator (under OS X).  The retail updater seems to ignore both of the OEM cards I have.  One has the 109 ROM and the other the 110 ROM.

  I'd like to make sure that all the flashable ATI cards I have are updated before I can't get hold of the files or methodologies any longer.  The following is a list of all the OS 9-capable ATI video cards I have right now and their current ROM revisions:

Rage 128 (unknown name) PCI 16MB VGA (ATY,Rage128y 204 ROM)
Rage Xclaim VR 128 PCI 16MB VGA/S-Video/Composite (108 ROM)
Rage Nexus 128 PCI 32MB VGA (103 ROM)
Rage 128 Pro AGP 16MB VGA/DVI w/fan (108 ROM)
Rage 128 Pro AGP 16MB VGA/DVI (110 ROM)
Rage 128 Pro (unknown name) AGP(ADC) 16MB ADC/VGA (ATY,Rage128Pd 130 ROM)
Radeon 7000 PCI 32MB VGA (109 ROM)
Radeon 7000 PCI 32MB VGA (110 ROM)
Radeon 9000 Pro AGP(ADC) 64MB ADC/DVI (131 ROM)
Retail Mac Edition Radeon 9200LE PCI 128MB VGA/DVI (127 ROM)

  Does anyone here know what the final ROM versions are for the above cards?  It looks like using Graphiccelerator and ROMs downloaded from themacelite website are probably the easiest way to go for flashing most of them.


Offline MacOS Plus

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Re: Do all OS 9-supported ATI video cards have flashable ROMs?
« Reply #2 on: September 19, 2016, 12:06:45 PM »
  StrangeDogs/macelite I know about but that last link you gave with the GeForce stuff I'd completely forgotten about.  Thanks!

  Like a lot of other things related to classic Mac OS, I've been getting really concerned about the potential loss of many of these web resources.  Imagine if we lost something like Macintosh Garden?  Perhaps there needs to be an organized effort put together to mirror this content in case the original site operators shut down.  Even just this info and downloads related to video card flashing would be a huge and terrible loss if they were gone for good.  Unfortunately the Wayback Machine doesn't always keep complete copies, particularly when it comes to file downloads.  I don't know of an efficient method of backup we could deploy ourselves.

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Re: Do all OS 9-supported ATI video cards have flashable ROMs?
« Reply #3 on: September 19, 2016, 06:34:28 PM »
  So here's where I'm at - I've done a lot of reading and checking ROM versions and models and produced a more detailed version of my list, with the cards in chronological order as best I can determine.  The first line includes the Apple part numbers where applicable, while the second line in each entry shows the details reported by Graphiccelerator including the core and memory speeds:

Rage 128:
(ATY,Rage128v 108 ROM) - Retail Rage Xclaim VR 128 PCI 16MB VGA/S-Video/Composite
- XCLAIM VR 128 ROM 113-57406-108 90.0/100.0

(ATY,Rage128y 204 ROM) - OEM Rage 128 (unknown name) PCI 16MB VGA (Apple PN 630-2896)
- RAGE 128 OEM ROM 113-57407-204 90.0/100.0

(ATY,Rage128n 103 ROM) - Retail Rage Nexus 128 PCI 32MB VGA
- NEXUS 128 ROM 113-57502-103 90.0/90.0

Rage 128 Pro:
UPDATED (ATY,Rage128Pd 108 ROM) - OEM Rage 128 Pro AGP 16MB VGA/DVI w/fan (Apple PN 630-2906)
- RAGE 128 PRO OEM ROM 113-63001-108 118.0/140.0 (OEM original)
- RAGE 128 PRO OEM ROM 113-63001-110 118.0/140.0 (OEM later, flashed with ROM from other card)

(ATY,Rage128Pd 110 ROM) - OEM Rage 128 Pro AGP 16MB VGA/DVI (Apple PN 630-3102)
- RAGE 128 PRO OEM ROM 113-63001-110 118.0/140.0

UPDATED (ATY,Rage128Pd 130 ROM) - OEM Rage 128 Pro (unknown name) AGP(ADC) 16MB ADC/VGA (Apple PN 630-3372)
- RAGE 128 PRO OEM ROM 113-72701-130 118.0/140.0 (OEM original)
- RAGE 128 PRO OEM ROM 113-72701-136 118.0/140.0 (OEM later, downloaded from macelite)

Radeon:
UPDATED (ATY,BlueStar 109 ROM) - OEM Radeon 7000 PCI 32MB VGA (Apple PN 630-3962/603-0916)
- RADEON 7000 OEM ROM 113-85505-109 166.0/166.0 (OEM original)
- RADEON 7000 OEM ROM 113-85505-110 166.0/166.0 (OEM later, flashed with ROM from other card)

(ATY,BlueStar 110 ROM) - OEM Radeon 7000 PCI 32MB VGA (Apple PN 630-4302/603-0916)
- RADEON 7000 OEM ROM 113-85505-110 166.0/166.0

(ATY,Phoenix,Parent 131 ROM) - OEM Radeon 9000 Pro AGP(ADC) 64MB ADC/DVI (Apple PN 630-4845/603-3352)
- RADEON 9000 PRO OEM ROM 113-99702-131 275.001/250.0

(ATY,Bugsy,Parent 127 ROM) - Retail Mac Edition Radeon 9200LE PCI 128MB VGA/DVI/S-Video
- RADEON 9200 MAC EDITION ROM 113-A27502-127 250.0/200.001

  Everything is OEM Apple except the Rage Nexus, Rage Xclaim VR and Radeon 9200LE which are retail editions.  What I gather is that you can't put a retail ROM into an OEM card without great risk of failure, even if you edit the core and memory timing in the new ROM to match.  The ROMs have an 11-digit part number where the middle five digits appear to represent a specific sub variant, and it seems you must match those five digits with any given replacement ROM.  I've used the tools provided with Graphiccelerator to extract ROMs from two cards I had matched pairs of so I could update whichever one in the pair was older.  That worked fine.  I also found a later OEM ROM on macelite for one of the other cards.  Three successful updates is pretty good!

  If anyone knows if there are any further updates for these specific cards that I'm not aware of, please let me know.  It's much harder to get clear information about this for the OEM cards.  I would appreciate user reports from anyone using these cards with later ROMs than I've found.