Radeon 9100 BIOS
  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    Does anyone know of a source for an Apple compatible BIOS for a Radeon 9100? I suppose a Radeon 8500 BIOS would work if the clock speeds were appropriately lowered, although I'm not sure if the Apple 8500's 64MB memory would affect the 9100 in use under MorphOS (it probably would under OSX).
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »19.01.11 - 17:52
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    analogkid
    Posts: 657 from 2004/11/3
    From: near myself
    Do you know this site?

    http://themacelite.wikidot.com/wikidownloads2
  • »19.01.11 - 19:41
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12079 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > Do you know this site?
    > http://themacelite.wikidot.com/wikidownloads2

    I think he does.

    https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7569&forum=11
  • »19.01.11 - 20:31
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  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    Yes, sorry, I didn't completely examine that. Hopefully I won't need a reduced ROM, but the modified ROM just might work. It's got the proper drop in clock speed.
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »19.01.11 - 20:32
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  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    Weird, I just noticed that the Radeon 9100 I bought has an ATI Rage Theater chip on it. I've seen a spot for this on Radeon 9000Pro, 9200, and 9250 cards, but I've never seen it populated.
    The last time I used on card with one of these was an old Rage128Pro card.
    I remember it was pretty good at bringing in composite video.

    Pity there's no MorphOS driver for this component.
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »13.02.11 - 04:48
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  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    I don't know if anyone is going to check out the part of the post, but just in case I've run into a problem and could use the advice of someone else who has a Radeon 9100.
    I tried re-flashing my 9100 card with this ROM

    http://themacelite.wikidot.com/wikidownloads2

    It didn't work correctly for me. Is there something else I need to know (like the 9200 resistor modification) or another ROM I could use?

    If anyone else has done this flash I'd appreciate some advice.
    I didn't have any problem modding and flashing my 9200, but this card is defeating me.

    Edit - I managed to get this card to work by forcing the flash with the -f option under atiflash. I'm using this to post this edit right now.

    I still have a problem. The BIOS listed above must be a modified 8500 or 8500LE BIOS. When I boot MorphOS the operating system thinks this card is a 8500 (or 8500LE) and that it only has 64MB (when it is a 128MB card). Any ideas how I might work around this or am I stuck with using only half the cards memory?


    [ Edited by Jim on 2011/2/14 5:07 ]

    [ Edited by Jim on 2011/2/15 2:25 ]
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »14.02.11 - 04:18
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    Acill
    Posts: 1914 from 2003/10/19
    From: Port Hueneme, Ca.
    Most of everythign you need can be found in this thread for the newer cards. If you need some help let me know. I have flashed several PC cards to Mac using a my Mac Pro and Powermac for PCI based. But that forum has a lot of info on flashing cards, even older ones if you look through some of the history, including links to bios files.

    http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=877441

    [ Edited by Acill on 2011/2/14 9:52 ]

    [ Edited by Acill on 2011/2/15 11:41 ]
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  • »14.02.11 - 17:44
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  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    Thanks, I can accept the 64MB limit since the card is clearly faster than the 9200 it replaced, but I am having one problem. Some text and occasionially some icons are a little distorted. This isn't consistant though. For instance, I'm posting this right now using the card a the display is fine.
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »15.02.11 - 00:04
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    Acill
    Posts: 1914 from 2003/10/19
    From: Port Hueneme, Ca.
    It may be the best you get. The 9100 wasnt ever made as a MAc card, if you see one its an 8500 ROM thats been hacked to work. I'm not 100% sure on that, but more like 90% sure of it.

    This thread may help you out some too.

    http://forum.macsales.com/viewtopic.php?t=62

    [ Edited by Acill on 2011/2/15 11:46 ]
    Powermac Dual 2.0 GHZ G5 PCI-X (Registration #1894)
    Powerbook 1.67GHZ
    Powermac Dual 2.0 GHZ G5 PCIE (Registration #6130)
    A4000T CSPPC, Mediator
    Need Repairs, upgrades or a recap in the USA? Visit my website at http://www.acill.com
  • »15.02.11 - 19:44
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  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    Thanks! That thread confirms something I suspected. I may need to lower the memory clock speed slightly. This could be the souce of some of my video glitching. The reason I suspected this is that under MorphOS it isn't a area of the screen that affected, its specific to some text and icons. When I move or scroll the text the same characters remain distorted.
    Its a same there no ATI control software so I can test a memory underclock.
    I'll have to look at OSX and see if I can test this via that OS.
    Again, you've been very helpful. Thanks.
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »16.02.11 - 01:10
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  • Just looking around
    Trev
    Posts: 16 from 2010/11/6
    You can use radeontool to dump the initialization tables from an x86 ROM image. radeontool is a Linux utility, but it will compile on most platforms with just a few modifications. You can also walk the tables in the ROM image using a binary editor, but that's a bit tedious. Edit: If you're still unsure of the core and memory timings, you can usually find them in the original product literature. You can always find the memory timings in the datasheet for the chips. All ATI Open Firmware images use the same codebase, and the PLL core and memory timings are pulled from two hard coded values. Very easy to change.

    [ Edited by Trev on 2011/2/17 0:04 ]
  • »17.02.11 - 08:01
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  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    Thanks Trev,
    After researching the card I have, I believe it was originally running at 250/250 so the BIOS I re-flashed the card with shouldn't have altered that.
    I've got to look for another reason for my video corruption.

    Edit - Video under OSX is less distorted. Text isn't affected and only a few graphical glitches appear.

    Addendum - It looks like re-flashed cards like this should be able to be moved into directly G5s as they lack the G4 specific hardware modifications of the Apple supplied cards.

    [ Edited by Jim on 2011/2/17 20:10 ]

    [ Edited by Jim on 2011/2/17 23:45 ]
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »17.02.11 - 15:09
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