Hi guys,

I have been using MorphOS on and off on my little Mac mini for some years now. More off than on, as the Mac mini is just too slow for serious work.

However, I was now fortunate enough to get my hands on a G5 PowerPC Mac 7.2. Unfortunately, it has an NVidia card, and therefore cannot run MorphOS. I still had a spare Radeon ATI 9200 SE lying around, and was hoping I could get it to boot.

I booted MacOS with the NVidia card, set the boot path via sudo nvram boot-device="cd:,\\boot.img", which worked just fine, confirmed the path is correctly set, then shut down, changed graphic cards, then booted from CD ... and waited.

However, MorphOS seems not ok with that card, the monitor never kicked in. Am I doing something wrong? Or is this card not supported (it is on the list)?

> I still had a spare Radeon ATI 9200 SE lying around, and was hoping I could get
> it to boot. [...] MorphOS seems not ok with that card, the monitor never kicked
> in. Am I doing something wrong? Or is this card not supported (it is on the list)?

In case it's a card with x86 ROM (as opposed to a Mac edition card with PPC ROM), you'll have to flash a PPC ROM to it and possibly perform a resistor modification. See that thread:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=14136&forum=11

Yup, it's just like Andreas says. You need to flash the Radeon and do the resistor mod to make 9200 work.

If you have a 9800 or 9600 you could get away with flashing only (but not all cards can be flashed properly).

That said, there's a good chance a R500 gfx card will work for you with no flashing needed. Just no OSX and no Open Firmware, but as long as you use only MorphOS - you're good to go with something like Sapphire Radeon X1950 AGP.

OK, that requires way too much work. I strongly suspect this is a PC AGP card, which is why it doesn't work.

So the solution is to get an ATI Radeon card compatible with a PowerPC Mac, I guess?

And yes, I want to run MorphOS only. Which is why I was hoping the 9200 SE would work. I do not need MacOS.

But MorphOS seems unable to initialize the card, most likely because the ROM on it has PC stuff on it.

> So the solution is to get an ATI Radeon card
> compatible with a PowerPC Mac, I guess?

For Radeon GPUs up to R4xx, yes. Starting with Radeon R5xx GPUs (as mentioned by koszer), Radeon cards can be handled by MorphOS also with non-PPC ROM. 'AtomBIOS' is the key word here (technically, AtomBIOS started with Radeon R4xx, but support by MorphOS only starts with the version used with R5xx).

Soooooo... a card like this "Retro AGP Grafikkarte Sapphire ATI Radeon X1300 PRO 256MB VGA DVI S-Video" would work?

X1300 is part of the R5xx series, correct? It is 30 EURO on eBay right now

> a card like this "[...] AGP [...] Sapphire ATI Radeon X1300 PRO [...]"
> would work? X1300 is part of the R5xx series, correct?

Yes and yes. X1300 is the lowest member of the R5xx series.

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Yes, it should work. Although sometimes the G5 is just 'picky' and won't initialize the (theoretically compatible) card no matter what.

A AtomBIOS AGP card might work, had a HD3450(?) working in mine for a while but it wasn't really reliable so I went back to the 9650 from a 2.7GHz G5.

IMO your asking for more trouble as it worth and you should pursue one of following options:

- get proper R300 Mac card, rare and expensive
- get a full AGP G5 with a Radeon
- get a PCIe G5 and add a X1___ Radeon to it (most sensible option)
- spend big bucks and get a Mirari ;)

I think a lot depends on what you actually want to do with your Mac
For example, if you also want to play older warp3d games, then the best choice for your Mac G5 AGP is an ATI 92xx graphics card with 128 MB
If, on the other hand, you’re not interested in backward compatibility, a good graphics card could be an ATI 9600 (you can easily find the Mac version of this) or a 9800, otherwise, if you’re looking for the best solution and are willing to accept the trade-off of not being able to access Open Firmware and use Mac OS, a rarer ATI x1950 with 256 MB
Perhaps in the case of the X1950, to work around the Open Firmware issue, you could try adding an NVIDIA PCI card though I’m not sure if that would work

I‘m not sure a 9200 card would even work in a G5 as they were all made for the G4 and it’s quirky AGP slot.

O.k. there also was a MacEdition 9250 PCI but that might be bit too obscure.

Yes, both the 9200 AGP and the 9250 AGP (both PC versions with Mac flashed ROM)
I use them and can confirm this

> I‘m not sure a 9200 card would even work in a G5 as they were all
> made for the G4 and it’s quirky AGP slot.

I thought the idea here was to use an x86 ROM Radeon 9200 like the one at the thread opener's disposal, which surely cannot have been made for the PowerMac G4. This can be made to work (PPC reflash and resistor mod) in an AGP-based PowerMac G5, see comment #2 and link therein.
As for genuine PPC ROM Radeon 9200 AGP, this one is specified as working in both PowerMac G4 and G5, for instance.

I want to use the machine as a daily driver of sorts. Emails, browsing the Web, listening to music, creating text documents - that sort of thing. I tried this with a Mac mini some time ago, but 1.25 GHz was just too slow. I hope the Mac G5 will be faster and make it a more amicable experience.

I hardly ever play any games - though I am curious to try the UAE port for MorphOS to play some old Amiga stuff.

I am currently trying to decide whether to get a Sapphire ATI Radeon X1300 PRO 256MB (which is a PC card but should work due to the AtomBIOS) or take some money and get a real ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB for an Apple Power Mac G5.

The former is cheap; the latter is expensive.

Also, the latter needs separate power. Looking into this G5, I am not sure where I would get it from.

Guven the last info on Wayfarer 12 I would strongly suggest not to use a gfx card <R300.

Anyway, I purchased the X1300. Will let you know if it works.

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People mostly steal amperes from optical drive, some from the harddrive SATA power cable.