(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.htmlI 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.