[spiff41398]

The hard disk of one of my PCs failed so I took it back to the supplier. Just for kicks, I decided to transfer the video card (Inno3D Tornado GeForce 2MX-400 64MB AGP) to my G4/500. Lo and behold, I got video and it booted into 9.2.2 without installing anything (but only at 640x480, 256 colors @ 60Hz)! I decided to clean install 9.2.2 on a separate partition (to see if it will natively install Nvidia drivers, and it did) and after restarting, I got a lot more options in the Monitors control panel. I settled for 1024x768, millions @ 85Hz. Playing Wacraft III was actually almost at par with the PC (Duron 850) in terms of speed and gameplay, compared to the stock 16MB ATI Rage Pro of the G4.

I installed 10.1.5 on another partition and the card works as expected (no QE though). Here's the info from ASP:

Card type: display
Card name: NVDA,NVMac
Card model: GeForce2 MX
Card ROM #: 1028F
Card revision: 178
Card vendor ID: 10DE
VRAM size: 64 MB

One downside is that OS X 10.2.1 does not get past the initial gray screen. The rotating bars below the Apple logo would stop after about 8 seconds and I have to force restart while holding down the Option key to get to the Open Firmware Startup Disk screen.

Any ideas?

[D'Espice]

Try to flash the Mac-Firmware for this card, you'll find everything you need and need to know here:

http://www.cybercoment.com/macgeforce.htm

Works great for me, I'm running Jag with a Hercules GeForce2 MX right now.

[spiff41398]

Thanks, but I'm trying not to go that route, because I'm still going to use the card in the PC when the hard disk comes back. I just thought of testing it on my Mac to see if it works without flashing. It does, albeit only on OS 9 and 10.1.5. No go for 10.2.1 though which I find weird.

[reader50]

Try turning off AGP support for QE. Modify the config file to specify PCI cards only. Then see if 10.2.x will boot.

[spiff41398]

Uhm, how exactly do I do that?

[reader50]

Open and edit the QE config file. This is most easily done from OS9 using BBEdit Lite, or other binary-safe text editor. The config file is owned by root, so you have to put up with the system's nagging and excuses, or boot from a different OS or partition.

The config file is:
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/
Frameworks/CoreGraphics.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Configuration.plist
(broken into two lines to be forums-friendly)

Find the line:
<string>IOAGPDevice</string>

... change it to read
<string>IOPCIDevice</string>

... and save the modified file. Note, you can also do this with Property List Editor if you have the Developer Tools installed. And can deal with the file permissions nagging.

The next time you boot that partition up, QE will ignore AGP cards, and will try to enable any suitable PCI vid cards. Assuming you don't have any, QE will be disabled.

[D'Espice]

Originally posted by spiff41398:
Thanks, but I'm trying not to go that route, because I'm still going to use the card in the PC when the hard disk comes back. I just thought of testing it on my Mac to see if it works without flashing. It does, albeit only on OS 9 and 10.1.5. No go for 10.2.1 though which I find weird.

Before flashing the firmware, the Batch-File saves the original firmware, meaning you can always flash it back again.