I located a cheap source of ATI Radeon 7000 PCI cards and I was wondering if anyone here has had success flashing these to the Mac versions. The ones I located have the DVI connector and Video Out. Apparently there is a matching Mac version that has these features too. It's going to be used in a Beige G3.
I had heard some cards didn't work all that well after being flashed, so any personal experiences would be welcome.
http://www.darkness.uklinux.net/
I just picket up yet another 7000 for my B&W and flashed it with files from the link above. The card is a genuine ATI, VGA-out only, 64MB.
My previous flashed card also had a TV-out, though I never tested that port to see if it worked on the Mac.
I did have one I couldn't flash, and that was a dual-headed 7000 by HSI.
It's all dependant on the rom size. Too small a rom, and the Mac rom won't fit.
I looked into buying the larger-size flash rom chips, but the only places I could find them wouldn't respond to emails or wouldn't sell smaller numbers than a few hundred chips.
I've noticed the prices for Mac 7000s are dropping considerably. I sold my flashed card for $100 about a year ago, now they're going on ebay for $50-ish for the real Mac card. If you're not getting a better deal than that for these cards, it might not be worth it...except for the potention thrill of successfully flashing it
I bought 10 from digikey, I forget the exact cost but was ~US$20 or so for the lot.
hth,
dan k
the 7000 is ok if you just need 2D and to watch video but any game over the quality of quake 3 is rough to use. I can run Q3 under panther with the 7000 at 1024 32bit and get about 26-28 fps. tried ghost recon and even with everything turned down all the way it was still very choppy. mine is a 32mb mac ed. though so I guess a flashed 64mb would perform a tad better.
it also allows you to enable quartz extreme over pci. works well on 66mhz pci in my B&W but I hear it runs ok on normal 33mhz also. some say it lowers video frame rates with dvd's and such but I have not noticed any degradation.