Finding a Mac ATI card is proving very difficult in the SF Bay Area, but i have come across a Matrx board that might be suitable. The driver says:
Hardware accelerated Matrox Mbillennium I, II, Mystique, G100, G200 and G400 but the Matrox website says otherwise. This forum entry suggests either Millennium or Millennium 2 for Mac (but not Mac OS X) http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/Forum3/HTML/002224.html So which cards really work under LINUX? Are we using at the same driver for Intel and PowerPC, with only some boards usable on a Old World Mac? Or do many of the Matrox cards work for either platform, but only a few are recognized by 'Open Firmware'/MacOS? (I could live with that, but i need to know that's what i'm up against.) The board in question has this data on the box: Matrox G400 4MB (refurbished) MIL2P/4BN/20 P/N 790750 10287 According to Matrox website, this is a: MIL2P/4BN/20 is Millennium 2 card, 4M memory, B bulk for US, in packs of 20. Lots of folks say that some Matrox boards can be 'flashed' from a PC BIOS to a MacOS BIOS. The website is unclear. Some Matrox FAQ/Forum says it may be possible to flash this to MacOS and others say not. It is not "supported"... (But do we care?) http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/Forum1/HTML/006281.html http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/Forum1/HTML/006122.html http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/Forum9/HTML/006093.html The real issue issue seems to be flash ROM size: http://forums.matroxusers.com/showthread.php?threadid=20010 Looking at the pinouts, it appears that the 28F512 and 28F256 might be pin compatible. But the question is whether there are actually two different boards being used, or the same board are the same (except maybe for silkscreening) but are stuffed differently. The 28F512 and 28F256 have 16 and 15 address bits, respectively, given 64KB or 32KB of memory. I downloaded their flash program and unpacked things, with 'Matrox MistralDrv:2fv.1.11.00.bin' being 60KB. So i would assume that ROM memory is needed. So, have people been about to run a Millennium II with a IBM BIOS? Has anyone successfully converted a card from IBM to MacOS? How does one know if a Millennium II board convert without being able to examine it physically? Can a IBM BIOS Matrox board be used on PPC LINUX if one has a second 'Open Firmware' board for boot/MacOS purposes? -- Tovar
