Taking one for the team

[aalegado]

I recently bought a PNY GeForce2 MX 200 AGP video card for my Win2K box. The card was cheap, $60. On a whim I decided to see what the card would do if I swapped it for the stock ATI Rage 128 Pro card in my G4-450MP (the "Gigabit Ethernet" G4).

Given that the card was made for the PC market it was certain not to work but a lot of times if we're asked, "Does it work in a Mac" the answer is, "Probably not but I've never tried it."

Well I tried it and it did absolutely nothing. Nuh-thin. The monitor would power-up but wouldn't even produce the "No Connection" message which tells me the video card is initialized but not producing a video signal it can lock on to.

So there it is: You can't drop a PNY GeForce2 MX 200 video card into an Gigabit Ethernet G4. This is most likely true for all PNY GeForce2 cards and probably any other manufacturer selling an AGP card using that chipset. This is also most likely true for the Digital Audio G4s and QuickSilver G4s that followed the Gigabit Ethernet G4...

But has anyone tried it? :D

[griffman]

I have heard rumors that you can make it work, but it's fairly convoluted and involves installing the card in a PC first, running some sort of ROM flasher, then swapping back to the PC. I don't remember where I read this, but I'm about 95% certain it related to using GeForce PC cards in the Mac.

I could be totally wrong, though :-).

-rob.

[lerkfish]

maybe we should start a thread : Don't try this at home :D

[aalegado]

Originally posted by griffman
I have heard rumors that you can make it work, but it's fairly convoluted and involves installing the card in a PC first, running some sort of ROM flasher, then swapping back to the PC. I don't remember where I read this, but I'm about 95% certain it related to using GeForce PC cards in the Mac.

I could be totally wrong, though :-).

-rob.

I'll run down this lead. I'd like to make this work so that we can take advantage of some of the inexpensve hardware available for our PC brethren. Obviously, if I learn something useful I'll be posting the results to this thread! :D

[bhines]

This has been discussed a lot in the xlr8yourmac.com forums.

The exact procedures are documented there, somewhere...

-B

[aalegado]

It's been done! I found a good article at http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/view.php?ID=30&Page=1/url] and a link to this URL which has everything in one place:

[URL]http://www.cybercoment.com/macgeforce.htm

This guy has links to software (PC-based flash application, Apple nVidia ROM data, etc.) and a table compiling all the cards that people have tried to date.

What I found interesting is that there are two cards that will work without needing to be flashed. These are the Hercules GeForce 2 MX PCI and the PNY GeForce2 MX 400 64MB. The last one is, ironically, the model one up from the one I bought for my PC. If I'd bought that one the test I did last night might well have worked! The table indicates that the MX 400 works under OS 10.1 as well as 9.1 so it looks like a winner.

I haven't found a supplier for the Hercules card yet but it should be cheap, sub-$50 since it's a PCI card. The PNY card is all over the place in the $80-100 range. The PNY GeForce2MX 200 card I bought requires the flash procedure.

My choice is, therefore, flash the card I have and if it works, buy a new card for my PC later OR buy a different card (maybe one of the no flash required versions) and leave my PC's card alone...decisions, decisions. ;)