Number Nine Revolution IV Support for Macs?

daniell asks: "Does anyone have a number9 revolutionIV working correctly in a MacPPC under either MacOS, Linux or NetBSD? I know that a Voodoo3 PCI card for a PC can be flashed to have its BIOS (x86) replaced with OpenFirmware/OpenBoot (Forth), then you use the drivers and it works on a Mac, under Linux PPC, or MacOS. I figured you'd just have to download the latest Mac firmware for the revolution IV (mine was packaged for a PC, but the card has a sticker on it that says MAC) and flash it in place. This is pretty seemless...the card is detected and updated; going back to PC BIOS works fine too. However, the Mac drivers for the revolution IV claim they can't detect a revIV card, even though the firmware upgrader did. If anyone has a working Mac revIV card, which drivers and or firmware are you using for it and what needs to be done to get it working? Has anyone found a description of what the one jumper on the card does?"

Ditch it. Get a Formac.

[Zoyd]

Assuming you're using it to drive a 1600SW [sgi.com], you should get rid of it and get a Formac ProFormance 3 [formac.com]. According to the reports I've read on the net, using the RevIV with a Mac is just painful. (The ProFormance 4 is just coming out now , but I don't know if works with the 1600SW {it should since it has LVDS output and can handle well over 1600 x 1024}. If it does, that might be an even better choice, though spendy {~$600).)

eBay has two Proformance 3s for sale [ebay.com] at this time, one for $50. While you're there, you can sell your RevIV [ebay.com] for $50 to $100, depnding on how good your ad is.

Yet-another-option(tm): Take advantage of Formac's trade-up-deal-for-unhappy-RevIV-owners(tm) [formac.com].

Re:Ditch it. Get a Formac.

[daniell]

wow I didn't realize this was accepted (thread);

hm.. I considered it before posting, but the rev IV was free the ProFormance was... costly.

Thanks for the info though.
-Daniel

Re:look get the PC card

[daniell]

[yup I didn't realize this thread was accepted]

um actually my card does have an SGI connector, but no monitor.

The card's been successfully flashed to work with my friend's windows machine, but he didn't get it working with NT, although 98 is fine.