{"id":1531,"date":"2015-08-24T00:22:27","date_gmt":"2015-08-23T16:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/?p=1531"},"modified":"2015-08-24T00:41:41","modified_gmt":"2015-08-23T16:41:41","slug":"flashing-an-ati-4870-for-macpro-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/2015\/08\/flashing-an-ati-4870-for-macpro-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashing an ATI 4870 for MacPro 1,1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a couple of older Mac Pro desktops that I tend to.
\nAs my machines usually get upgraded to the max, they’re still pretty darn useful.
\nCurrently they’re all Dual Quad Core 3Ghz \/ 16G Ram 1,1->2,1 flashed, which is more than enough for dev purposes. <\/p>\n

Sadly though, they still have the original graphics cards – rather crappy 7300GT’s.<\/p>\n

One of the issues with the Mac Pro 1,1 is that in Yosemite* the original graphics cards aren’t really supported.<\/p>\n

*Sure Yosemite isn’t really supported either, but it does work after a bit of EFI boot mangling.<\/p>\n

You can work around things, by having a newer NVidia card (i.e. anything 6XX and above), but then you lose boot graphics till the OS loads drivers.<\/p>\n

As I sort of quite need boot graphics due to the bootloader side of things getting borked on occasion, I thought I’d source myself a compatible card.<\/p>\n

There aren’t really that many options unfortunately for vintage equipment, its mostly 8800GT’s that are at least 5 years+, and priced at silly money.<\/p>\n

There are other options though – certain PC graphics cards are usable.<\/p>\n

As a Mac Pro 1,1 (2,1), it needs a card that:
\n#1 – Shipped on a Mac Pro 1,1 or 2,1 (so that AMD created an _EBC_ based Mac BIOS).
\n#2 – Has a flashable BIOS. This rules out most of the NVidia’s of that era, so its a select number of ATI cards.<\/p>\n

Netkas.org is a good source of reading for that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

ATI 4870 appears to be flashable, and wasn’t too “$$ bills yo!” on Taobao <\/p>\n

So, sourced myself a 4870 1G card (235RMB w\/shipping), and set to work.<\/p>\n

There is a wealth of information out there about flashing, but unfortunately all the links appear to be pretty dead.<\/p>\n

The general consensus is to dump the original firmware, then patch it yourself. There are tools for this, but they don’t really work. Cindori’s Zeus et al..<\/p>\n

I tried to do this inside the Mac Pro itself, but it wasn’t having any of it, and didn’t like the perfectly fine DOS USB key(s) I made. Luckily I also had a Windows box available to dump \/ flash.<\/p>\n

Fun and games with PSU connectors later, I booted off a DOS boot disk, used ATIFlash to dump my original rom, then shutdown again.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0068\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Stuck the USB key back in my laptop, used a ROM I found inside Zeus (show package contents, copy the 4870EFI.ROM out) + patch that with my dumped rom using fixrom.py from here – http:\/\/forum.netkas.org\/index.php\/topic,692.0.html<\/a> and the patch instructions here – http:\/\/forums.macrumors.com\/threads\/race-to-dump-the-4870-rom-whos-first.661681\/page-14#post-7297669<\/a><\/p>\n

Copied the patched rom back onto the USB, rebooted off again into the DOS boot disk on my Window box, and flashed the new patched EBC rom bios.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0069\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A few minutes of recabling later on the Mac, I got a nice boot screen off the card. <\/p>\n

Works fine in OSX too (sleep etc appear to be fine).
\n\"IMG_0070\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

As this was a royal pain in the ass, I have the pre-patched rom here – ROM<\/a><\/p>\n

Its specifically for the 4870 card I have, so don’t randomly flash to your 4870 card, unless the part number matches. My P\/N is below.<\/p>\n

Radeon HD4870 1G Dual DVI
\nPN 288-20E85-230AC<\/p>\n

Enjoy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a couple of older Mac Pro desktops that I tend to. As my machines usually get upgraded to the max, they’re still pretty darn useful. Currently they’re all Dual Quad Core 3Ghz \/ 16G Ram 1,1->2,1 flashed, which is more than enough for dev purposes. Sadly though, they still have the original graphics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,282],"tags":[513,512],"class_list":["post-1531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-firmware-2","tag-513","tag-flashing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1531"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1542,"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions\/1542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}