Use a PC GeForce card in your Mac
Jul 12, '02 08:48:51AM
Contributed by: Gwyrrdin
With the forthcoming release of OS X 10.2 aka Jaguar, everyone with a ATI Rage 128 pro, or even worse, will not have the advantage of Quartz Extreme. But there is a solution, if your machine has an AGP slot. Go to the local PC shop and buy yourself a cheap GeForce card.
I bought an Asus GeForce2 MX 400 64 mb with TV-out. This card didn't needed to be flashed, and it worked out of the box ... but not with any OS X version above 10.1.2. In those versions, your card will be limited to a resolution of 1024*768 and will perform very badly. But have no fear! There is a simple solution for this. Read the rest of the article for the how-to...
WARNING: You'll do all of this completly at your OWN RISK!
The following how-to also appears on gargleblaster.org...
- Reboot your machine in OS 9.
- Download TomeViewer
- Download the Apple nVidia drivers
- Use TomeViewer to extract AENV MacFlash [1045-MRS] from the tome-file.
- Open up your applescript editor and enter the following:
tell application "AENV MacFlash [1045-MRS]"
CompareROMVersion
if (CompareROMVersion) = true then
FlashROM
end if
quit
end tell
- Press the check syntax button ( you never know) ...
- Now save the script in the same place as where you have saved the extracted rom (AENV MacFlash [1045-MRS] )
- Run the freshly created AppleScript.
- Reboot to X.
- Enjoy your GeForce powered System.
If everything went well, System Profiler will tell you the following:
Card name: NVD A, NVMac
Card model: GeForce2 MX
Card ROM#: 1045F
I did all this in a cube 450 mhz with firmware 4.19f1. It needed some soldering and work to get it in the cube AGP slot, but that was only because I wanted it to look nice. In the G4 towers this isn't necessary at all. I didn't test the S-video and the TV-out plugs, but the card works perfectly, and should continue working when Jaguar ships.
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http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020712084851928