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Sawtooth Panther owners take note if considering a video card upgrade

2K views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  MasterBlaster 
#1 ·
http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/hardwareandnews/nvidia103/nvidia103.html

"Since Mac OS X 10.3 was released on Friday, October 24, 2003, there have been many reports of the NVIDIA GeForce4MX cards (and other cards from different manufacturers) not working under this new operating system. It seems that Apple pruned out any extraneous code it could from different .kext files (drivers). What is strange is that only customers with Power Macintosh G4 "Sawtooth" logic boards seem to be affected by this loss of video - Gigabit Ethernet, Digital Audio, Quicksilver machines are fine. It seems that the lack of the 28v ADC power connector on the logic board causes the card to not be recognized. After all, Apple did not ever ship these cards as a part for older systems, and NVIDIA has never retailed cards for the Mac platform for end users to buy. The only way to get the card was to receive the card bundled with your system or to purchase one from a 3rd party company such as OWC, and it's up to Apple to write the drivers for the card as the OEM vendor of the product.

As we have been selling these surplus cards for many months with no problems until now, we have been actively pursuing any leads on restoring functionality to these cards. After all, they are still working in most systems including ones they originally shipped from the factory installed in.

There are a number of existing forum threads on Apple's own discussion boards about this, as well as reader reports at XLR8YourMac, MacFixit and MacInTouch. You may find them interesting - I know we have been reading them actively.

This fix does have one limitation: Quartz Extreme is NOT activated but the card is at least usable while we continue our efforts to restore full functionality. We want the cards to work 100% as much as everyone else does :>) With any luck there will be a follow up article to this one in the near future with Quartz Extreme support, or Apple will fix what has been broken with a 10.3.x update."

more on the site

These cards are pretty popular upgrades - luckily it's just the Sawtooth - Cube and Gigabit and QS owners are okay. :cool:
 
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#2 ·
Pardon my ignorance Macdoc, I have a G4 MDD dual 867, would it have a sawtooth board??

By the way, there is a Panther in my future... But the operative word here is "Future". ;) Thanks
 
#3 ·
Good point - too much Tech speak.

Sawtooth motherboards comprised the first AGP series of G4s.
Yikes look the same but have CDs, a 66 mHz pci bus (same motherboard as a Blue & White ) and are not involved in this.

Sawtooth came in 350, 400 450 a a very rare 500 version ( Apple pulled it after anouncing it ) and they have DVDs.
They have no ADC ports on the original cards and the little tab that powers the ADC on the motherboard is missing.
It's confusing because there were 3 versions of G4 400s Yikes, Sawtooth and Gigabit.

I can see why Larry didn't spell it out on OWCs note.

So this does NOT apply to
G4 Yikes
G4 Gigabit 400/450/500 and Dual 450s and 500s
G4 Digital Audio series 466/533/667/ 733 DP 533
G4 Quicksilver G4 733/800/867/933 and DP 800/DP 1000
G4 MDD 867 and up

:cool:
 
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