[justageek]

Just in case anyone's been wondering...I have not yet flashed my Sapphire 8500 card. Started renovating my house just as the card arrived...projects, projects. I'm also waiting to hear back from Sapphire; I asked them if they could send me their latest firmware for the card (that way, I have a backup!). On rage3d someone had written that they sent him to an ftp site (which was not working when I checked) to get firmware for his Sapphire.

The more I think about this, the less I think it will actually work. The PAL/NTSC jumper being the sticking point. I have seen no other reports of cards with a jumper. But I have seen tons of reports of people trying to flash PAL to NTSC or vice versa, and they accomplish this with firmware. Which begs the question, how could I possibly flash this with an NTSC only firmware and hope to achieve success??

I may just end up abandoning this project and ebaying the card if I don't hear back from Sapphire.

[LUCK]

a week or so ago I flashed a #102.... PC Radeon 8500 64mb AGP. everything is smooth as silk except one thing... My apple monitor control panel is picking up a second monitor and I only have one connected... therefore it is telling ATI displays that there is two so to split the ram/buffer/etc between the two monitors.
Ive noticed a few others having the same problem but noone has spoken up for a fix or acknoledge it. Im wondering if anyone out there who has had the problem found a fix for it.>? Im getting worse benchmark<norton> readings than a stock 16mg Rage AGP.

thank you in advance
Ralph

G4 Dual500
1gb ram
Flashed 8500
apple 20" w/vga adapter
OS 9.2.2
( I have tried all dif combos of rom(123-126)/mhz(230-275) config with no effect on the dual monitor issue...even swapped out RomXtender to achive different NDRV settings but nothing seems to work.?? h e l p ??

[mr. burns]

i was wrong about my card being ati-made. my folks were the ones that got it off ebay and it didn't arrive in time for christmas so they printed up a picture of an ati-made box and wrapped it now that the card has finally arrived i've discovered that it is made by Apollo and it's called the devil monster II, hardcore gamer edition [whatever that means]. it's still 64MB ddr, with s-video out and a dual monitor cable. it looks pretty well made, with a nice big fan on the main chip, although the box design leaves something to be desired. the designer misspelled TRUFORM as TURFORM and it's at a low enough dpi to see some jaggies, but i'm a design major so i notice these things :]
since it's the 'hardcore gamer edition' i'm hoping the specs are right on par with the ati retail version [3.3ns ram]. we'll see how it goes in a couple days. i'm still optimistic.

[ReggieX]

mr. burns, is this your card?
http://www.exhardware.com/reviews.php?Id=74
If so, make sure you change the clock speeds of the Firmware UPDATE program to 250/250 before you run it.

[mr. burns]

Originally posted by ReggieX:
mr. burns, is this your card?
http://www.exhardware.com/reviews.php?Id=74
If so, make sure you change the clock speeds of the Firmware UPDATE program to 250/250 before you run it.

hmmm... same box pretty much, but different card than what is shown on the second page of that review. i'm pretty certain i have the non-LE version. nowhere on the card does it say LE. i don't have any heatsink and there's a sticker on the back of the card saying 8500 DDR-64MB+Full. the memory was also made by ESMT, not Samsung like on the LE card. i think the company was cutting costs by using a universal box design because on the box it says 'up to 128 DDR memory'. in the web picture, there's a yellow label saying 128MB in the upper left of the box but on my box it's covered by a sticky label, of the same design, saying 64MB.

i'll look into that review some more. thanks for the headsup, though.


[edit]: well, having gone to apollo's website, it looks like they don't even make a non-LE version. so i might have gotten screwed over by their vague box design and horrible documentation. whata bunch of f�ckwhores. i have all the different speed rom updates so i'll try the 250/250 first. depending on how well quake3 plays i might just leave it at that.

just to be completely sure, i run the restore, then the update, correct?

[justageek]

Got a response back from Sapphire. I'm sure they must be pretty busy at this time of year! They sent me the latest firmware for my card (yay!) and, get this, they also told me that I have an 8500 not an LE (the wrong card must have been in the box that Enetshoponline sent me). I gave Sapphire both my PN and serial number as part of my inquiry and they confirmed my suspicion that something was weird about the packaging. Clearly, this video card business is a wee bit corrupt.

So with the backup firmware, I'm just about ready to try this. Hopefully, I'll get around to it over the next couple of days.

[GoGoReggieXPowars]

You got it.
The main thing to remember is to not have the monitor connected when doing the initial RESTORE flashing. What I also did was create a custom Extensions set based on the "OS9 Base" or whatever it's called set, to minimize any conflicts before I put the RESTORE flasher in the Startup Items folder.

Print out the http://www.coffeehaus.com instructions just to have them handy if you're feeling unsure.

[justageek]

Did the restore and just got a black screen on startup. Accidentally had plugged the monitor back in after installing the radeon card! Arrrgh. Even though I had read about this a million times I made the mistake because I was following the coffeehaus instructions to a '"T." Note: they don't say anyting about unplugging the monitor!!

Tried again with monitor unplugged. Still nothing. But I think I'm getting an error message or prompt. It sounds like an alert is popping up on the screen or a confirmation box of some kind. Grr. This would be easier with a second video card!

[mr. burns]

luckily i have the radeon 7000 so i'll just have my monitor connected to that the whole time. no need to do the process blind.

[LUCK]

anyone having the ghost monitor hangup with their flashed 8500 please email me maybe we can figure this out.

thanks
Ralph

[email protected]

[justageek]

Installed VNC today on my Mac OS9 partition and a Win2000 machine. Had VNC startup from the Startup Items folder on OS9. After the Mac booted, I logged in via VNC on the Windows machine, then I ran the restore utility and also tried the updater and did this with various versions of the same. The long and short of it is that I got the dreaded Slot-SLOT-A:R200-A13 error.

Damn.

Guess that's the end for me unless this has something to do with a vendor version ID that could get changed from a PC. I know others had to give up when they came across this error. Hrmm.

[mr. burns]

well, i installed my radeon [which was a very loose fit] and tried running the flash restore then the update, but i'm not sure if the apps are behaving right. i have a radeon 7000 installed so i did it with video and everything. when i opened the apps i'd just get the watch for a split second, then i'd be back in the finder. is there supposed to be a window with a progress bar, or is this normal. if it's normal then i got a dud card. but i don't think the flashing actually happened because i tried to put in my roomates pc after that and i got some video. it was kind of chopped up with random charcters all over the screen, but i was able to see the windows startup screen and i think i hadn't push the card down into his agp slot all the way :x

so is there something wrong with my flashing apps?

[justageek]

Originally posted by mr. burns:
when i opened the apps i'd just get the watch for a split second, then i'd be back in the finder. is there supposed to be a window with a progress bar, or is this normal.

You should see a dialog box with (I think) a firmware revision number and a progress bar. This dialog box was displayed when I tried it but then an error window popped up and covered the dialog box with the progress bar and gave me the slot-SLOT error.

From what I've gathered, in my situation the card was not updated at all and would still work in a PC at this point (the progress bar never budged). Scotttheking and one or two others noted the same problem (with the slot-SLOT error). For you it sounds like something must have happened since your card doesn't work properly in a PC at this point.

So you probably have a dud card but you should be able to restore the PC bios on it. Unless, of course, you've fried the memory if the card somehow became OC'd.

[justageek]

I think we need to backtrack. Someone previously noticed that a certain component on his non-working card was different in form from that of cards depicted in pictures. There were also reports that the video bios size was changed from 128k to 64k at some point.

Well, some digging around led me to the following picture...



On my card, I have the smaller, rectangular component. While it is possible that this item still has the same capacity as the larger component, I'm wondering if this is truly the identifying factor that these cards have a smaller video bios.

Mr. Burns, what does the video bios look like on your card?

[GoGoReggieXPowars]

mr. burns, try it without the 7000 in. Just an idea.

justageek, I'll have a look at my card tonight. Can't give a picture, but I'll write down what I have.

[mr. burns]

Originally posted by justageek:

Mr. Burns, what does the video bios look like on your card?

i can't tell which one is the bios. i'm not chip savvy enough to know. i'll try it without the 7000 later on.

[justageek]

Mr. Burns, the video bios is located to the lower left of the GPU (with the fan on it). I looked back at the previous mention of this issue and it was johhhn who first made the observation way back in this post...

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...58#post1045158

He has a picture of the exact place to look:

video bios location

ReggieX: Don't need the actual part number. I haven't found a reference online that I can check to verify the size. It's just the physical size of the component we're looking at right now. It's possible that the working cards have a square component rather than a smaller rectangular component as present on my card and some others that have failed.

[mr. burns]

my bios is the same shape as the one pictured. this card is working fine in my roomates pc but i cant flash it from my mac. i don't know anyone with a pci videocard installed :/

[justageek]

Sames shape video bios huh? Well, that might quash that theory...

As long as you have access to two computers on a network you could try installing VNC server on your Mac (from OS9 of course) and VNC client on the other computer. Then remove the flashing utility from the startup items folder and just run it through VNC as you would if you had a second video card installed. That's what I ended up doing.

Just make and alias of VNC server (after you've configured it) and then drop the alias in your startup items folders so it launches after your Mac boots. Then just log in from the other computer and you'll see the Mac's screen and be able to interact with it on the remote computer. It's very easy to do and will resolve any questions you may have about not seeing any error messsages, etc., while flashing.

[TomD]

Ummm.. that's no BIOS...
It's a 27MHz crystal.
The board is built to take either size to allow for multiple vendors.

[justageek]

Originally posted by TomD:
Ummm.. that's no BIOS...
It's a 27MHz crystal.
The board is built to take either size to allow for multiple vendors.

Hrmm. Well, I'm not an EE (obviously) and I don't have an IC component reference. I had mentioned in a previous post that it was likely components would change on these boards as the product progressed through its life cycle and the design was refined, etc. That would explain why so many different versions of the card layout have been spotted. I suppose if you can accurately identify the crystal you might be able to identify the black chip to the immediate left and if that is the video BIOS chip maybe you might also be able to tell us how to determine the size.

Or maybe if you know more about this whole flashing situation (and our inability to flash certain cards) maybe you could shed some light on the issue? What the heck is the slot-SLOT error, for instance?

[mr. burns]

Originally posted by justageek:
Sames shape video bios huh? Well, that might quash that theory...

As long as you have access to two computers on a network you could try installing VNC server on your Mac (from OS9 of course) and VNC client on the other computer. Then remove the flashing utility from the startup items folder and just run it through VNC as you would if you had a second video card installed. That's what I ended up doing.

Just make and alias of VNC server (after you've configured it) and then drop the alias in your startup items folders so it launches after your Mac boots. Then just log in from the other computer and you'll see the Mac's screen and be able to interact with it on the remote computer. It's very easy to do and will resolve any questions you may have about not seeing any error messsages, etc., while flashing.

too late. my roomate with the PC just moved out. it worked fine in his computer, so i'm just goin to try and sell it back on ebay. i also have a BTO ultra scsi card i want to sell on there, so i'll just put that towards a mac edition :/

[justageek]

Originally posted by mr. burns:
it worked fine in his computer, so i'm just goin to try and sell it back on ebay. i also have a BTO ultra scsi card i want to sell on there, so i'll just put that towards a mac edition :/

Yeah, I've been thinkin' about doing the same thing rather than just have the card lying around here. But I can't test it in a PC. I assume it's fine, after all, it didn't even start to flash. On the other hand, if you look at prices on ebay for Radeon 8500's they seem to be pretty low (like in the 50's), so I wonder how many $$$ could actually be recovered that way.

[mr. burns]

Originally posted by justageek:
Yeah, I've been thinkin' about doing the same thing rather than just have the card lying around here. But I can't test it in a PC. I assume it's fine, after all, it didn't even start to flash. On the other hand, if you look at prices on ebay for Radeon 8500's they seem to be pretty low (like in the 50's), so I wonder how many $$$ could actually be recovered that way.

i got mine off ebay for $80+. most go for around $70. not bad.

[TomD]

Originally posted by justageek:
I suppose if you can accurately identify the crystal you might be able to identify the black chip to the immediate left and if that is the video BIOS chip maybe you might also be able to tell us how to determine the size.

Or maybe if you know more about this whole flashing situation (and our inability to flash certain cards) maybe you could shed some light on the issue? What the heck is the slot-SLOT error, for instance? [/B]

It's not any sort of memory chip, either they are in 8pin packages or many pins.
It must be on the back of that board.
You may not be able to flash cards that have only a ROM. The manufacturers sub in ROMs because they are cheaper.

Never heard of slot-SLOT error, that's one for google to find...

[justageek]

Originally posted by TomD:
It's not any sort of memory chip, either they are in 8pin packages or many pins.
It must be on the back of that board.
You may not be able to flash cards that have only a ROM. The manufacturers sub in ROMs because they are cheaper.

Never heard of slot-SLOT error, that's one for google to find...

The card I have should be flashable. I contacted Sapphire to get the most-recent firmware for the card and they sent it to me (I supplied part number and serial number).

The slot-SLOT error has been encountered by several others in this thread. Unfortunately, Google turns up nothing. And I wasn't able to find anything on ATI's site either (thinking they might have some reference since it is their flashing utility that is generating the error).

[ogobetse]

I've been through the ringer with this card... i can't get it to flash with any of the flashers here...
The stock 8500 UPDATE/RESTORE
8500 firmware mod230/230
8500 firmware 230 - 230

I'm always getting a slot-SLOT-A:R200-A12 error

the PN on the card is 1024-2149-4B-SA (PAL, 64MB, 250/250) (EAN# 48951062 0063 0). that's from sapphire's site.

I'm pretty sure the card can't be flashed. I've posted at PhilMUG forums too (they've got a pretty big section), and i've done everything that coffeehouse has recommended.

Hope someone can help me out.

[Todd Madson]

One thought would be to make sure the card
actually works in a PC before flashing it in the Macintosh.

I'm not entirely sure what that error is indicating but it almost sounds like the card or the program trying to communicate with the card isn't happy.

--

By the way, as an aside: I was hoping to get my old Rage 128 Pro that had been sitting as a doorstop since I pulled it out of the G4 to work in a PC I cobbled together.

and I found out that there is a site called "Rage Underground" at http://www.rageunderground.com/ which has drivers and such and information.

Essentially they say the following if you're thinking about it. The site is very PC centric but some useful info can be found there.

It says:
"Is the BIOS on the Rage128 flashable?
Yes, the BIOS is flashable, according to ATI. Note that our field reports have uncovered gruesome casualties. DO NOT attempt to flash the BIOS.

I just found a flash utility and a Video BIOS, how should I flash it?
The simple answer is that you should NOT flash your BIOS! The reason is that there are over 50 revisions of the Rage 128 card."

Better to sell the things on ebay for people needing AGP cards for Mac and move on.

Meanwhile the Radeon 8500 chugs away in my G4 happy as can be.

[LUCK]

A friend of mine and myself bought a PC Radeon8500 from the same guy. we each flashed ours with the same utility. ( I forgot to disable extensions on restart and so it flashed a 2nd time with the monitor plugged in) and way I got a ghost monitor. Im not certain if friend disabled extensions or not, but he got a ghost monitor as well. He has since sold his in a Tower, I still have mine(selling in a tower). I sent him mine after he reported to me doing another on his gf's Gateway and it worked as should ( is in my tower at moment) , though from my flashing the Bios was now locked and the PC couldnt get into it. He also has reported to me that the guy he sold his to is running out from the DVI port and getting all 64mb's on the single monitor. so that hints that perhaps the DVI is the main outlet and the VGA being the 2nd outlet, so theory being as long as all you "ghost" monitor folks go through the DVI port for your image you will get all 64mb's rather than going through the VGA and splitting it with the DVI ports GHOST.

hope this helps some.

[Todd Madson]

Check this out:
http://www.home.zonnet.nl/Hoek89/index.htm

It's a PC dedicated site to flashing ATI 7500 Radeon and 8500 Radeon cards.

Apparently his new flashing utility allowed people to create their own customized overclocking settings for the Radeon.

Apparently ATI went ape when they heard about it and made the guy take it down since his ROM flasher had ATI IP in the code. Ouch.

That being said, one thought I had was that I have a PC game on my PC box that is a video card hog. I thought about swapping the GeForce2MX card in my PC into my Mac and if that worked acceptably to see how the Radeon did on that game.

Problem is, I've flashed the Radeon to work in my G4 so I doubt I've got a way back to the dark side of the force with that card.

I have a feeling that the only way these cards will be flashable in the future is if someone does this stuff under the radar so to speak or when the cards are end of lifed they won't care so much perhaps.

Anyway, for the moment my 8500 is chugging away inside my G4.

[ogobetse]

A couple of people recommended using a dvi to vga adapter to get rid of the ghost monitor problem, so bought apple's version.

the problem is that the male dvi pins (extruding from the adapter) that plug into the graphics card are not the same as the female pattern on the 8500.

Anyone know what i'm talking about?

Dave

[LUCK]

Try Gateway maybe?? Seems a lot of the OEM's out there are Gateways' ( for the DVI to VGA connector ).

[Rabid Duck]

Originally posted by ogobetse:
the problem is that the male dvi pins (extruding from the adapter) that plug into the graphics card are not the same as the female pattern on the 8500.

Yup, I went through this too. There's actually two kinds of DVI: DVI-D, which only sends out a digital signal, and DVI-I, which has extra pins for analog support. If your card has a DVI-D connector, and yours most definitely does, there's no feasible way to convert the signal for use on your CRT. Check out the third topic at http://www.iiyama.com/web2002/s_faq.htm for an illustration.

I sent mine back to the place I ordered it from and had it replaced with the other version of the 8500 they listed. This card had DVI-I, but it worked fine (no ghost monitor) when I used the standard 15-pin analog jack.

The lesson here? Always make sure you're getting DVI-I, not DVI-D, unless of course you have a digital monitor.

Hope this helps,
RD

[LUCK]

a little off topic , but just wanted to let yall know ( in case anyone has any PCI mac's around still ) there are some success stories recently of people Flashing PC R7000's to Mac ( 32 and 64 version)

I dont have the particulars but you can find them in the last weeks' or so archives for the "supermac list" over at LEM (lowendmac.com) (maclaunch, I think is where the archives are stored on the site)

[lucyfurry]

Just flashed a Hercules Prophet 8500 LE card from Staples, now on sale in Canada for $100 CDN:

http://www.staples.ca/products/catal...skusetid=14316

The card is 250/270 but I had to flash it at 230/230 to get it to work. So far everything works great in OS9.2.2 and OSX.2.4.

Gonna try video out and dual monitor setup tonight, as well as the QE hack with my Radeon 7000.

[ogobetse]

I has seccessfully flashed an ATI 8500 and it was working for a while. Then i put my mac in the shop to make a heatsink setup. When i got done, my ATI card wasn't giving me video and i couldn't flash it... (it flashed without any hitches when i bought it)
I put it into a PC and got the same thing... it shows up in the system hardware devices, but i get no video.

I'm thinking that the bios is completly gone, but i dunno. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks dave

[bstone]

Other than price, is there a difference in functionality for the 8500 depending if I purchase the Mac Edition or flash it? I am concerned about missing out on some goodies.

[LUCK]

the goodies are all there if flashed successfully.

[bstone]

Originally posted by LUCK:
the goodies are all there if flashed successfully.

But the question is, is there any difference between a purchase 8500 Mac Edition and a flashed 8500 other than price?

[a2daj]

You'll also miss out on support. Also, some consider flashing a PC version with the Mac ROM another form of software piracy (it's meant for owners of the Mac cards and it is copyrighted). But like that means much these days...

[bstone]

Originally posted by a2daj:
You'll also miss out on support. Also, some consider flashing a PC version with the Mac ROM another form of software piracy (it's meant for owners of the Mac cards and it is copyrighted). But like that means much these days...

That's a biggie. If the card has problems, ATI ain't gonna help if they hear it's been flashed, are they? What is the price difference like between the PC and Mac ver. of the cards?

[bstone]

Big question: What a better card- the ATI 8500 or 9000? Each has 64mb. Each say they are excellent cards.

[LUCK]

nope no difference ( in my case ) though my R8500 runs a litle quicker than a stock Mac issue. ...btw, some also think the sky is blue, though it only appears to be. Once you purchase a product it is yours to manipulate it however best serves your needs... thats why it is ok to paint a ford a factory chevy color after you buy it. It is certainly ok to use ATI software to manipulate an ATI product to fit your needs. ( assuming you own it ) It is not ok, however, to manipulate it for your own needs and then resell it to someone else.... that would be copy right infringement. Though ATI certianly doesnt want you to flash the card when they can sell you virtually the same card for $100 more than they sell it to PC users for. Though they have caught on and it isnt something you can do with newer cards... on a side note, I also have a friend who has flashed a 64mb PCI R7000 from PC to Mac and all is well. =)

[LUCK]

...if you are a gamer the 8500 is the best choice, if you are not then the 9000 is the better choice.

[GoGoReggieXPowars]

If any of you folks out there are still trying this I only have one thing to say:
Do NOT have your monitor plugged in when flashing!!
That first time is crucial. Do what I did: set up a custom Extensions set with the bare minimum you need to get into OS 9, reboot once or twice to make for damn sure that it works flawlessly, THEN add the Restore flasher to your Startup Items. Turn off machine, put in PC card, turn power on, wait 5 minutes for the flasher to do its job, shut down, plug monitor in, then make ABSOLUTELY SURE that you have Shift held down while you power on to turn off all your extensions. Heck, keep holding it down until you see it boot all the way to the Finder.

[LUCK]

Word to that!!! thats how I screwed up my first one... even though I knew better =)!

Do not let the flasher flash with anything plugged into the monitor outlet ...else you have wasted your money.

The missing Wonder Twin knows, and you have been warned... maybe if I was warned more than 10 times I might of remembered ( I think I was only warned 8 or 9 times).

[a2daj]

While you own the physical card you bought, you do not own the firmware used by the card. That is software owned and copyrighted by ATI. You are only licensed to use it with the card. The Mac firmware is only supposed to be used by owners of the Mac version of the cards as are the PC firmware and PC cards. If you go to ATI's site and click on the "find a driver" link there's a licensing agreement that more or less states this. And if the firmware was downloaded at some other site that doesn't have ATI's permission, that'd be illegal distribution of software.

It would be like taking the datafiles for Unreal Tournament from a PC disk and using those with the Mac OS X app. That's not the intended use and is considered software piracy since you would be robbing the Mac publishers of a sale.

The Mac and PC groups at ATI are two separate departments and handled differently. I sale for the PC group doesn't necessarily help the Mac group. It hurts the Mac group more than anything.

There was a good discussion a few weeks ago at Arstechnica about what goes into the Mac development at ATI and covers some of the reasons with the pricing. It all boils down to business 101.

ATI Discussion (MrNSX works for ATI)

[:haripu:]

Another success to report here with flashing the Radeon 8500 128MB version! Everything runs very smooth and I haven't noticed any oddities up until now.

I also haven't experienced the 2nd monitor effect, although i had to try twice to flash the card successfully. I was just lucky, I guess.

Man, I am happy.

[bstone]

Originally posted by :haripu::
Another success to report here with flashing the Radeon 8500 128MB version! Everything runs very smooth and I haven't noticed any oddities up until now.

I also haven't experienced the 2nd monitor effect, although i had to try twice to flash the card successfully. I was just lucky, I guess.

Man, I am happy.

This is fantastic news. I am bidding n the 128mb 8500 now on ebay for around $55. Hopefully I will get it and flash it.

[bstone]

Anyone have the link for the web site which shows me how to flash the card in OS 9?