Mac Rad9000 in a vanilla PC?

guartho · Oct 9, 2005, 09:00 PM

I posted about this in the bottom of Damage's BIOS flashing thread, but it's been a few days without even someone telling me I'm crazy for wanting to try it so I figure it's getting overlooked. Plus, on second thought, I don't want to hijack his thread anyway.

The deal is, I have a home-brew AMD K7 running with a flakey Voodoo3 3500. I also have a Radeon 9000 Pro Mac Edition sitting in a box. I've heard of flashing PC ATI cards to run on a Mac, but I'd like to reverse that as I have a budget of $0.00 to upgrade this just-for-fun computer of mine. Has anyone around here done anything remotely similar, or have any ideas for me?

thanks.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Oct 9, 2005, 10:14 PM

Why do you have a Mac card if you own a PC....

I don't know if the BIOS is the only difference or if they're physically different, but it is entirely possible that its just the BIOS that says weather it can run or not.

ATI does have a 9600 PC and mac I think, so it is worth a try.

My guess would be to flash it with a PC 9000 BIOS and see if it works and if it doesn't, try and flash it back and see if a Mac can run it

guartho · Oct 23, 2005, 07:09 PM

Thanks for the advice. I didn't think I'd find a Rad9000 128 meg pc driver, but I think I did. I haven't brought my PC back to school yet so I haven't tried it yet. I will update everyone on my success or failure though.

I have a Mac card because it came out of my Mac.

guartho · Nov 8, 2005, 10:19 AM

Success! The only extra thing I had to do was use a PCI card to perform the operation. I didn't really have to, but I wanted to back up the Mac BIOS first in case I ever have to put it back in my Mac. Other than that it was just as easy as Damage's thread suggests.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Nov 8, 2005, 04:27 PM

Good to know!

That means the Mac users can't complain anymore cause the PCB is identical, so they're getting the same card except the BIOS is different.