This is a shaggy dog story. I gave a pre-QS 733 DA that runs great on 10.2.6 with hardly a KP. As an interim before buying a G5 I purchased a GigaDesigns 1.467 GHz upgrade card from OWC. After installing it (checked firmware was 0.4.28f1), at the first boot the chime was very LOUD and slightly truncated and there was no video, mouse or keyboard activity. It is also impossible to use command + option + p+ r to reset PRAM or command + option + o + f to get into open firmware. Thinking the board was DOA, I called GigaDesigns in Ca and got some great troubsleshooting help from Tim Ericksen but nothing we could do worked (downlclocking, upclocking, removal all peripherals, changing Vreg core voltages 1.6 to 1.65 to 1.7--except that changing the Vreg to an out of spec 1.7 V and downclocking to 1.2 or 1 GHz sometimes got to a gray Apple splash screen followed immediately by a KP). Thinking the board was faulty in some way, Giga sent me another that was known good. And I have the exact same problem. Neither board can boot this Mac. We have had conference calls with the engineers but nothing suggested works. We have checked the video board--swapped out for known good card; checked for corrupt PRAM--removed battery and power cord, pressed CUDA, reinstalled old CPU and done reset-all, reset-pram, reset-nvram; checked RAM in three slots, checked 12-V line voltage; cleaned mult-connector on mainboard) and NOTHING works. But as soon as I put back the old 733 card, the Mac works like a charm and shows no signs of any problems at all.
The clue seems to be in the loud boot chime that is slightly truncated. It seems that the DMA to the boot chime (stored in PRAM?) somehow is picking up an error and the subsequent I/O never gets started.
Has anybody actually got one of these cards working on a pre-Quicksilver 733 Digital Audio Mac? xlr8yourmac.com has plenty of reviews for 466 AGP and other machines but I have not found a review for this 1.467 GHz card in this DA Mac although Giga says they have customers with this registered setup?
Any final suggestions besides sending both cards back for a refund?
PS. Gigadesigns has been great with support and calls to Japan from the USA but even they seem stumped and have never seen this problem before.
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