Post by aquamac on Jul 4, 2007 21:43:27 GMT
I finally got a BFG 7800 GTX 512/256 working in a mac pro using the EFI rom from the mac elite downloads section after a lot of messing around. A guy approached me and asked if I could convert a PC Quadro to an EFI one to work in a mac pro. I told him I thought it could be done. He bought a card off ebay and sent it to me untested (something I did not know at the time). When it arrived it must have had the wrong rom flashed onto it as it sent my PC into a total continual rebooting frenzy with no screen output. I had to fit a 128kb chip for the EFI rom anyway so I cut the chip off and soldered on a new one and flashed it with the std PC Quadro rom. It booted up. Fine at least I was starting with a base with which to work, or so I thought....
To cut a long story short, I spent ages fiddling with the rom on this card, moving timings across, but I could never get beyond the blue screen at boot up and a number of artifacts on the grey Apple screen. The card also had me worried, the metal bracket that should run the length of the card was missing although the rear extension was still there and I started to wonder about the history of the card. The guy who bought it payed good money for it, but had already given the seller good feedback as he was quick. Well I'm not surprised, I bet he couldn't wait to unload it. I then started to test the card in windows properly and have found many anomalies with it, including artifact glitches and crashing.
So.. I thought I would see what happens if I flash my 7800 GTX 512 with the EFI image with just a few edits. Well it booted straight up and works fine!
So I thought, what about my 256 7800 GTX card, a few edits later to adjust the rom to 256 and that also works fine.
So there are 2 lessons here to be learned, the first is, (and it has been said many times before), always test your cards in windows to check they run consistently before flashing and 2 always be careful when spending a load of money on ebay, there are some pretty unscrupulous people around! Personally, if I had spent that sort of money on a card and I received what this guy had I would be pretty p****d!!
On the bright side, it looks like there are now some options for Mac Pro users as opposed to the 1 ATI option they currently have!!
To cut a long story short, I spent ages fiddling with the rom on this card, moving timings across, but I could never get beyond the blue screen at boot up and a number of artifacts on the grey Apple screen. The card also had me worried, the metal bracket that should run the length of the card was missing although the rear extension was still there and I started to wonder about the history of the card. The guy who bought it payed good money for it, but had already given the seller good feedback as he was quick. Well I'm not surprised, I bet he couldn't wait to unload it. I then started to test the card in windows properly and have found many anomalies with it, including artifact glitches and crashing.
So.. I thought I would see what happens if I flash my 7800 GTX 512 with the EFI image with just a few edits. Well it booted straight up and works fine!
So I thought, what about my 256 7800 GTX card, a few edits later to adjust the rom to 256 and that also works fine.
So there are 2 lessons here to be learned, the first is, (and it has been said many times before), always test your cards in windows to check they run consistently before flashing and 2 always be careful when spending a load of money on ebay, there are some pretty unscrupulous people around! Personally, if I had spent that sort of money on a card and I received what this guy had I would be pretty p****d!!
On the bright side, it looks like there are now some options for Mac Pro users as opposed to the 1 ATI option they currently have!!