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You are here: MacNN Forums > Enthusiast Zone > Hardware Hacking > How to flash GF3 Titanium !!!!!!

How to flash GF3 Titanium !!!!!!
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Amacapart
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Sep 17, 2004, 02:58 PM
 
Alright, here it is. The long awaited secret to flashing the GeForce 3 titanium series !!!!

I have been meaning to learn Golive or some other HTML layout software, but some issues have kept me from being able to do this. Don't give me any grief about it being a big JPEG or I will replace it with a political piece you won't want to read.

These are still great cards, worlds better than the Rage and GF2 cards. Faster than a 8500 and has Pixel Shader support in Halo, unlike the 8500 & 9000 which look rather muddy in comparison. Only minus is it can't do more than one screen at a time. (single head)

You can find these for between $15 and $50 on ebay. Don't bother with the VGA only ones. Prices are about the same and DVI might be in your future, especially now that Apple has come out of the DVI closet.

I NEVER found a GF3 I couldn't flash, so order away. (A few Ti 200's artifact, read my page)

Someday I will get around to the Radeon 7200 AGP and 9800 XT articles, as I figured those two out as well.

Please post your success stories. If you can't see resistors in my pics, don't even try to solder as they are smaller in real life.

Good luck, please help me keep offering new video card options for Macs. I have posted some other projects I think worthy, could use more help. When my life no longer involves time spent in a medical facility, I will be able to devote myself to this. hopefully soon.

We deserve more video options. Since no one is stepping up to the plate to offer us mid-range options, we will have to find them ourselves. Radeon 9600 is another project I hope to get to.

There is one person who may be able to help with flashing & re-clocking software for Nvidia cards. I believe that Thomas Perrier who wrote ATIccelerator I & II could do this. Support his efforts and encourage him to help !!! He has spent a great deal of time writing that software. Had he not revealed the 9800 Pro secret, I never would have figured out the 9800 XT and Cube sized 9800 Pro. He could help hundreds of us Mac users but he has to eat...

Anyhow, have at it.



GF3 Ti Flashing
( Last edited by Amacapart; Sep 17, 2004 at 03:06 PM. )
     
dualboy
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Sep 24, 2004, 07:16 PM
 
I followed your instructions,(printed them out actually) and the card does not work.
I had to d/l a small program to get nvflash to work though as there was an error about
no dpmi present. after that, it flashed fine. I am at a loss as to what I did wrong.

Any help you could give me will be appreciated.
     
Amacapart  (op)
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Sep 24, 2004, 08:56 PM
 
First question is what is device id of card?

Can be found in ASP if you have a PCI card. Can also be checked in DOS with nvflash. This must = 200. Card will flash fine whether or not id =200. It just won't work.

Which NVflash version did you use? I don't recall seeing a message about "DPMI" ever.

Which ROM file ? If you open ROM file in hexeditor, 3rd line on left should read "50 43 49 52 de 10 00 02 " where 10de is vendor id and 0200 is device id. If your ROM doesn't match, is wrong ROM for a GF3.

I have converted dozens of GF3's. This works.

dp
     
dualboy
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Sep 24, 2004, 11:51 PM
 
Originally posted by Amacapart:
First question is what is device id of card?

Can be found in ASP if you have a PCI card. Can also be checked in DOS with nvflash. This must = 200. Card will flash fine whether or not id =200. It just won't work.

Which NVflash version did you use? I don't recall seeing a message about "DPMI" ever.

Which ROM file ? If you open ROM file in hexeditor, 3rd line on left should read "50 43 49 52 de 10 00 02 " where 10de is vendor id and 0200 is device id. If your ROM doesn't match, is wrong ROM for a GF3.

I have converted dozens of GF3's. This works.

dp
device id is 200...I checked it before I flashed. nvflash was 4.46. I used rom 1057. I got it from the nvidia firmware updater 1.1 that came from apple.com File name was originally
nvidia1057.19-p51.rom.
     
Amacapart  (op)
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Sep 25, 2004, 12:09 AM
 
That is correct ROM.

Can you check this card now from a PC or Mac to see what dev id it reports and if ROM actually flashed?

What messages did PC report during flash process?

You booted in "real" DOS not at the command prompt in Windows, yes?

I am not kidding when I say ALL GF3's are flashable. I'd be willing to lay $100 on it. I NEVER found a card that couldn't be flashed. (If it worked on PC to begin with)
( Last edited by Amacapart; Sep 25, 2004 at 02:16 AM. )
     
dualboy
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Sep 25, 2004, 03:26 PM
 
Originally posted by Amacapart:
That is correct ROM.

Can you check this card now from a PC or Mac to see what dev id it reports and if ROM actually flashed?

What messages did PC report during flash process?

You booted in "real" DOS not at the command prompt in Windows, yes?

I am not kidding when I say ALL GF3's are flashable. I'd be willing to lay $100 on it. I NEVER found a card that couldn't be flashed. (If it worked on PC to begin with)
I cannot check this card now as it does not display anything. I don't remember the messages displayed during the flash, but i know they weren't bad. I booted using a win98 disc on a PIII 1Ghz machine. I think I have a pci video card it an old server. I'm gonna try to find it today and run both cards so I can see what i'm doing when I try this again. That will work, won't it? the pci card will display, but the nvflash will still access the agp card?

Wish me luck, I'm going in!!!
     
dualboy
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Sep 25, 2004, 06:27 PM
 
Well, I tried it again, still does not work. I used nvflash ver 5.06 this time. the flashing goes well, It just doesn't work in my mac. I got the following information from it after flashing:


Image size 45568bytes
version 1057.19
~crc32 8382bcba
oem string all 4 of these
vendor name have a character
product name I cannot
product revision reproduce
chipname geForce 3
vendor id 10de
device id 0200
subsystem vendor id 0208
subsystem id a5b8

the card is a chaintech gf3 ti200 model#ag321.

I'm stuck. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. At this point, I'm ready to buy one on ebay.

Dualboy
     
dualboy
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Sep 26, 2004, 12:41 AM
 
Well, I flashed the card a few more times, using roms 1057,1055 and 1045. No success.
I finally flashed the original rom back into the card. It is now working like a champ in my PIII 1Ghz pc. Installed the newest drivers (61.77) and it works fine.


Any ideas? Anyone?

dualboy
     
macgfx
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Sep 26, 2004, 01:07 AM
 
Originally posted by dualboy:
Well, I flashed the card a few more times, using roms 1057,1055 and 1045. No success.
I finally flashed the original rom back into the card. It is now working like a champ in my PIII 1Ghz pc. Installed the newest drivers (61.77) and it works fine.


Any ideas? Anyone?

dualboy
When you boot your Mac what does it see the card as? Are you sure you changed the Chip ID correct?

Sounds like the Mac is not reading the Rom on the card. In order for OpenFirmware to use the Fcode in the Rom the Chip ID (0200) of the rom must match the Chip ID of the Card.
Joy!peffpwpc
     
dualboy
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Sep 26, 2004, 01:27 PM
 
Originally posted by macgfx:
When you boot your Mac what does it see the card as? Are you sure you changed the Chip ID correct?

Sounds like the Mac is not reading the Rom on the card. In order for OpenFirmware to use the Fcode in the Rom the Chip ID (0200) of the rom must match the Chip ID of the Card.
yes I changed the id correctly. nvflash shows it as 0200. the card has NO display output when in my mac.
     
Amacapart  (op)
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Sep 26, 2004, 05:08 PM
 
OK,

As mentioned in my article there were 2 or 3 Ti 200's I could not get to work correctly. I always assumed this was due to the Mac ROM being an "overclock" of the original ROM. This is why I always wanted to figure out re-clocking these.

Some ideas:

1. Is there any way you can "remote pilot" the G4? Or better yet, use a PCI card to see what the Mac "sees" in slot 1?

2. If you have put card in PC with id still 200 it will make little difference to PC. Use Rivatuner to bump the clock speeds up to see if card can run at standard GF3 speeds.

3. Chaintech card is either blue or yellow HSF, yes? I am pretty sure I did a couple of those, no problems.

For furtherproof that others have accomplished this, look on ebay, a company called Powerbox Tech copied my work and has been unloading GF3 Ti cards for awhile now. They even list this in ads.
     
dualboy
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Sep 29, 2004, 02:26 AM
 
Originally posted by Amacapart:
OK,

As mentioned in my article there were 2 or 3 Ti 200's I could not get to work correctly. I always assumed this was due to the Mac ROM being an "overclock" of the original ROM. This is why I always wanted to figure out re-clocking these.

Some ideas:

1. Is there any way you can "remote pilot" the G4? Or better yet, use a PCI card to see what the Mac "sees" in slot 1?

2. If you have put card in PC with id still 200 it will make little difference to PC. Use Rivatuner to bump the clock speeds up to see if card can run at standard GF3 speeds.

3. Chaintech card is either blue or yellow HSF, yes? I am pretty sure I did a couple of those, no problems.

For furtherproof that others have accomplished this, look on ebay, a company called Powerbox Tech copied my work and has been unloading GF3 Ti cards for awhile now. They even list this in ads.

Amacapart, I don't know what remote pilot another computer means, so no I can't.
I also do not own a pci video card for a mac, and I won't buy one to try this. (If they were as cheap as pc pci cards,maybe). You said bump the clock speeds up on the card, do Titanium cards run slower than the standard gf3? And yes, the heat sink is yellow (gold actually). As for needing further proof that you have done this, I don't need it because I don't doubt you have done this before.

I tried to flash the card again using an old version of nvflash. 3.19 I think. I saw on white rabbit that gf3's were supposed to use versions older than 4. But it still did does not work.

I've been off work for the past month recovering from surgery. it looks like I'll have to go back to work on monday. I won't have the time to work on this anymore. i'll just buy one on ebay and be done with it. I appreciate all of your help and suggestions on this project.

Thank you,
Dualboy
     
baakre
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Oct 3, 2004, 03:12 PM
 
I was able to successfully mod a Visiontek Xtasy 6964 (Geforce3 TI 500) to a standard GF3 using the simple resistor change method (moved R217 to location R216) and flashing it with the Mac bios.

It was a piece of cake! Thanks Amacapart for the nice writeup!

     
macgfx
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Oct 4, 2004, 01:12 PM
 
DualBoy's card must be 64bit VRam ,the wrong Vram configuration, or a different PCB layout.

Why not just mod the Mac Rom to the correct Device ID? The NVDrivers(.kext) will still load no need to solder.
Joy!peffpwpc
     
Amacapart  (op)
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Oct 4, 2004, 07:53 PM
 
I tried, that doesn't work.

You have to mod kext id file to do that. (only lists 200, not 201 or 202) This is why no on else figured this out before.

A poster elsewhere managed to get that to work but ONLY by modding kext.

FromNV20 kext:

<string>0x020010de&amp;0xfff8ffff 0x025010de&amp;0xfff8ffff 0x028010de&amp;0xfff8ffff</string>

You can see dev id 200 (GF3), 250 (GF4 Ti), and 280 (?)

If you change one of those to 201 a Ti200 will work (with dev id hexedited in ROM) changing it to 202 will allow Ti 500 to work. BUT, you will have to mod this file for every OS update. For those with soldering skills, better to move 1 resistor once and be done with it.

No who's gonna figure speeds & OS X flasher? (I would but it's not my turn)
( Last edited by Amacapart; Oct 4, 2004 at 08:05 PM. )
     
mike457
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Oct 12, 2004, 06:57 AM
 
Originally posted by Amacapart:
I tried, that doesn't work.
Dave,
Now that you've got this all figured out, is there any chance you could send me the Geforce 3 Titanium I bought from you on eBay on July 2? You haven't replied to any of my emails or phone calls, and I'm still struggling through trying to get my money back from eBay. Personally, I'd rather you kept the money and I got my card! Item number 5105608474.
     
paulusb
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Oct 17, 2004, 02:36 PM
 
I've seen requests for someone to modify the OS X NVIDIA flasher. I don't what version you are using out there but I have used a command line version. It is the same one that can be extracted from Apple's latest NVidiaROMupdate.
It is here:
NVidiaROMUpdate.pkg:Contents:Resources:NVUserXFlas h

I this the executable that needs mods? What are the changes specifically?

I have an older version, 2.1.f1, which was not very flexible and needed a 'kext' to be loaded. I found three from different places and the associated 'kext' is different in each!

For version 4.41 of the NVIDIA Mac flasher it appears you no longer have to load a 'kext' file. I used it and hexeditor some months back to catalog all the ROM files I could find.

The syntax is now
./NVUserXFlash ....

Below is the output when running the above command by itself:

NVIDIA Flash ROM utility
Version 04.44

Usage:
nvflash [commands] [rom filename]

Commands:
file f <filename> Flash the ROM using <filename> (no confirmation),
then do compare and ~CRC32.
directory d <dirname> Find the appropriate ImageROM for the display adapter,
then flash the ROM using it (no confirmation).
save b <filename> Read ROM and save to <filename>.
cmpROMversion k <dirname> Compare ROM Version between the Image ROM and the current ROM.
version v <filename> Display file version and ~CRC32
(if no filename, acts on ROM).
help ? Display this screen.

Just like the PC version, the single letter commands are preceded by a '-'
and the 'word' commands are preceded by '--'. I ran the command
strings NVUserXFlash | more
and searched for hidden options.
These are the words I found bunched together.
help index version save compare erase straps file display cmpROMversion directory

I am curious as to what 'straps', 'index' ,'erase' and 'index' are capable of doing.
One would possibly look at the PC nvflash syntax for ideas.

The strings command also showed a looooong list of NVIDIA card names and numbers, a list of eeprom/flash devices and what I think is a list of board types.
     
Amacapart  (op)
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Oct 17, 2004, 03:30 PM
 
The big question is, can you get it to run when the only Nvidia card in is a PC one at boot?

I run it fine in terminal if there is a Mac flashed Nvidia card in at boot.

If I place a PC flashed Nvidia card in at boot, when I try to run the Terminal App I get something along lines of "ioterator returned null" and "can't connect to resource manager" . In the kext itself is a place where it looks for matches to strings like "NVMac,NVdia" and such, these are strings from Mac ROM. When it doesn't find the right info in ROM it doesn't run.

SO, have you been able to do this with a PC Nvidia card in and NO Mac nvidia card? (ie from an ATI card)

I will be very happy if you have.
     
   
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