8500 = FireGL?

[specter]

so, i'm wondering if someone managed it to hack the 3046 firegl drivers to install on a 8500?

if so, what do i have to expect?

- i'm using maya 4, maya 4.5 and max 4.2
- also i'm playing quake3-engine games and stuff like this.
- i love my tv-out and sec. mon. support.

i guess i cannot have it all but...

1. will i have directx-support with this drivers?
2. will i have sec. mon. support and tv-out?
3. can i use the cat driver panel?
4. what about theater mode?
5. does it fix the shading problems in maya? for me, it feels like
all viewport shading is kind of buggy (talking about maya).
my cv's and the hull are sometimes invisible.
6. isn't it possible just to exchange the ogl-driver? remembering the wickedgl-times with 3dfx)

by the way, does the 8500 support Hardware Overlay Planes?
if not, will the firegl drivers activate this feature?

many questions need many answers

[Dark]

As far as i understand it, the FireGL is a whole different beast at the hardware level so this wouldnt work. Unlike the Geforce and Quatro cards which are the same at the hardware level other then one or two resisters. But it is speculation on my part, but i doubt it or i am guessing we would see more info on this by people posting.

[Y-STU-K]

actually i can tell u that they aren't there based on the same core but with different ram, i have some hacked drivers but they don't work at a screen res above 640x480

[specter]

i know that there are working hacks for some older firegl drivers. there was a thread: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthre...ghlight=firegl
where some guys did an hex hack on the .sys and .drv files, so they could install the drivers.

maybe someone can email me the older ones!

i guess the firegl 8800 and the radeon 8500 are basicly (gpu core) the same. maybe different memory and boardlayout.

[amirk999]

FireGL cards are for workstations, they aren't optimized for gaming, so why would you want to install these if you play Q3/based games?

[KlaasBaas]

Aha so the 046 drivers are released.

I'll go back to my workbench, and modify them to work on
the 8500. With WinXP SP1 it's is a bit more difficult then
withou SP1.
But i got my modified 036 DireGL drivers working again
on the 8500 WinXP SP1.

<the question list>

1. will i have directx-support with this drivers?

YES

2. will i have sec. mon. support and tv-out?

Probably not, i'm not sure though

3. can i use the cat driver panel?

YES, but if it is 100 % compatible ?? no clue

4. what about theater mode?

Don't know

5. does it fix the shading problems in maya? for me, it feels like
all viewport shading is kind of buggy (talking about maya).
my cv's and the hull are sometimes invisible.

Probably, it's a complete different way to get OpenGL then
with the 8500 driver set. I know houdini works much better
and Max4.2 too.

6. isn't it possible just to exchange the ogl-driver? remembering the wickedgl-times with 3dfx)

No, cause the ogl dirver of the FireGL talks to the FireGL
.sys file (driver), which is not compatible with the
.sys file of the 8500.

Keep you posted.

[specter]

i'm so happy to hear from a guy who does not ask

"why you want to use firegl drivers when there are catalyst"

ok, i'm not that firm in hacking drivers and hexediting, but if you could explain the process, what to do, i can do it for myself.

otherwise maybe you could send me the hacked ones and get a big "thank you" for it.

by the way, what are your experiences with the hacked 036?

off topic:

do you know renderman (pixar) and mental ray?
which renderer is the better one?
renderman is kind of expensiv and mental ray is now part of maya 4.5. so, are there any reasons to buy renderman?

ok, thanks for competent reply. hope you can hack the new drivers!

[Kaiser_Sose]

Originally posted by specter

do you know renderman (pixar) and mental ray?
which renderer is the better one?
renderman is kind of expensiv and mental ray is now part of maya 4.5. so, are there any reasons to buy renderman?

Are you able to model and animate like the studio ... if the answer is no, then mental ray is fine

[KlaasBaas]

OK this weekend i took the time to modify the FireGL 046
driver set.
After 20 minutes of work i got it installed, and it works
perfect.

The only strange thing is that the driver is added to the dowload at www.ati.com for the firegl 8800 and not the
firegl 8700, only the amount of memory is different i thought.

Anyway they work fine, i don't know about improvements or
sability issues.

[specter]

hi!

so, maybe you could send me your hacked firegl or explain how to do it?

if you want to send me the driver, you can use the following account. you can upload up to 100 mb on this account.

upload@the-specter.de

big thanx for your work!

[KlaasBaas]

Sended, to both adresses i even think.

Good luck

[specter]

thanx a lot, man!!!

will try them when i'm back from work.

by the way, what performance increase can i expect in maya and what about games?

[KlaasBaas]

MOHAA eeh i think about 10 % maybe 15 %
But it is not intended for games.

For 3d apps about 15 % to even 50 %
But mostely around 15 to 20 %.

Try SpecviewPerf 7.0

This is a prof. opengl performance tester.

[JCLW]

I do a fair bit of work in AutoCAD plus a little in 3DS and am very interested to see how these work out. I'd love to use them as long as games remain playable and DVD stuff works.

KlaasBaas:
Q1: Any reason why they wouldn't work on a retail ATI 8500LE?
Q2: I'm using Win2000 SP3 (CDN$350 for XP Pro... right...). How hard would it be to make a Win2000 version?
I was reading the old thread but it gets a little over my head.

Specter:
Be sure to post how they work

- JW

[motionride]

I´d love to get the driver too.
But for win2k...

Is it possible to make these changes to the win2k-drivers ?

[Mikeonhike]

KlaasBaas,specter>

are those drivers gonna work on hercules 8500le 128mb

do I have to flesh with ati bios (now there is only vendor id modifyed (radedit) and I didn`t have success with modifyed xp 6.12.10.3030 firegl 8800 drivers-card is not found)

isn`t vendor id enough for checking card or there is something else?

[JCLW]

FYI: My 8500LE ASIC is 0x514c, same as a regular 8500

- JW

[Mikeonhike]

Originally posted by JCLW
FYI: My 8500LE ASIC is 0x514c, same as a regular 8500

- JW

my catalyst 2.3 shows this:

device id: 514c
vendor id: 1002
subsystem id: 0004
subsystem vendor id:1002

bios version 7.008

any chance those mod firegl 8800 drivers gonna recognize my card as normal radeon 8500 (not hercules)

[KlaasBaas]

Yes they should work on any 8500 LE/Pro/Retail.

It's indeed the ASIC code !!
So it should work on all 8550 clones (i did not test it)

Yes the mod should also work for the Win2k driver.
Thoug i didn't modify them, and don't have the driver and don't use Win2k. But it's the same trick.

DVD under this driver... No clue but i think Yes.

Games with these drivers, yes D3D support is also in
the FireGL driver. Sometime maybe faster sometimes maybe slower. Overal it performs 5 % slower in 3dmarks2001SE.

But it is mend for 3d apps anyway.

You don't need to flash your 8500 card.

But you need to hack the drivers, hex editting the binary.
And modify the inf file too.

[SilentSnipeR]

so ummmm, how do I mod those drivers? I got a friend that does a bit of Cad work that could use them

also, what kind of control pannel is in these drivers? are they similar to the catalyst, or the old control pannel?

[KlaasBaas]

I use the control panel of the 8500 driver set.


I'll sent you the mod.
Beware to download the full 046 driver set too.

And read the howto.txt.

BTW it's only WinXP !!!

You could try to use the files in win2k too.
Maybe it works, i would not prefer it though.

[motionride]

please can you send me the mod too ?

and the How To ?

mail : motionride_nr1@hotmail.com

[JCLW]

Quick link to ATI drivers:

http://pdownload.mii.instacontent.ne...win2k-3046.exe
http://pdownload.mii.instacontent.ne...winxp-3046.exe

OK, to copy what schadow1 posted here:

1) Download the driver. Unpack it. Find the fglrx.inf file and modify it. In [ATI.Mfg] section, just add a line like this:
ATI "Cheap" Fire GL 8800 Video Accelerator=FGLRX,PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_514C

2) Remove old driver. Restart Windows. Install the new driver. Restart.

3) On restart, the driver will fail to load because it checks for a 8800 card. Edit these files with a hex editor (hexworkshop for example: http://www.hexworkshop.com) and change these bytes:

(the first column is the offset from the beginning of the file. The second one is the original byte. The third one is the new value. Ie: 00129B64: 48 4C means that the byte in offset 129B64 is a 48 and should be changed to 4C. All the values are in hex).

For XP
------
in fglrxgl.dll:
000C9CD4: 48 4C

in fglrxm.sys:
00000148: 7F 03
00040F48: 48 4C
00040F4A: 80 00

4) Make sure the modified files are in their correct places (system32 for the dll and system32/drivers for the miniport driver). Reboot. (If you could not overwrite the sys file, do booting from a floppy).

Steps #1, #2, and #4 are easy.

How does one determine which bytes to change in step #3 to change the Win2000 3046 drivers?

- JW

[roguegamer_2000]

Great Job KlaasBaas!

I was wondering when these would get hacked. I tried to figure it out from some of Hex Editing threads from the previous versions of the driver but I could never get the driver to activate even though it installed with no questions asked.

I was wondering if you might beable to send me the modified files if you get around to it.

My email address is roguegamer_2000@yahoo.com

Thanks in advance.

[JCLW]

OK I'm still working on 3046 Win2000 drivers...

By searching for the common strings from the hacks in the older thread I've figured out:

In fglrxgl.dll
@offset 0x000CAE88 change “48” to “4C”

In fglrxm.sys
@offset 0x00000130 change "30" to "??"
@offset 0x00042034 change “48” to “4C”
@offset 0x00042036 change “80” to “00”

But I can't figure out the last change in the start of fglrxm.sys as it's different in each driver version/OS

Can anyone shed some light?

[edit]
OK it has always been @offset 0x00000130 in the Win2000 driver so I'm guessing it hasn't changed. A CRC maybe?
[/edit]

[edit2]
AHA! I believe it is a CRC thingymabob, always 7C less in the modified file because going from "48" to "4C" you gain 04, and going from "80" to "00" you lose 80 for a total loss of 7C. But the original value @ 0x00000130 is 30. How does one subtract 7C from 30? 130-7C=B4?
[/edit2]

[edit3]
Nope. B4 gives me an error 75% of the way through the installation.
[/edit]

-JW

[JCLW]

Here's another idea:

Why not just change the device ID in the BIOS to match that of a FireGL 8800?

BIOS flasher

BIOS structure (from RadEdit help file):

File:
0x0000: 0x55 0xAA
0x0002: db bios size in 512-byte pages
0x0003: jmp ...init...
0x0018: offset PCIR
0x001E: 'IBM'
0x0030: " 761295520"
0x0048: offset ATi_header
0x0050: date/time

0x0074/70: dw 0x1002 - VendorID (ATi) ... 0x174B PC PARTNER ?
0x0076/72: dw  - SubProdID

0x0080: title

PCIR:
0x0000: 'PCIR'
0x0004: dw VendorID = 0x1002 (ATi)
0x0006: dw ProductID

ATi_header:
0x0000: db header version

0x000A: offset 'PMI' ?
0x000C: offset Type2 script1
0x000E: offset CRC_zone
0x0010: offset original file name
0x0012: offset Title
0x0014: offset id/name/title2

0x001C: dw 0x1002 - VendorID ... 0x174B PC PARTNER ?
0x001E: dw - SubProductID
0x0020: dw - ProductID

0x0030: offset Clock_zone
0x0032: offset TV_zone
0x003A: '$TVS' - dynamic TV standard support
0x0046: offset Type1 script1
0x004E: offset Type2 script2
0x0054: offset Type1 script2

Clock_zone:
0x0000: db 0x0A / 0x08 - version?
0x0001: db 0x46 / 0x32 - clock zone length
0x0002: db 03, 03 / 02 - ?
0x0004: dw offset ?
0x0006: dw offset ?
0x0008: dw M-CLK
0x000A: dw X-CLK
0x000E: dw reference
0x0010: dw ref. div ?
0x0012: dw min clock ?
0x0016: dw max clock ?

TV_zone:
0x0000: '$TV'
0x0007: db TV init type
0x0009: bit: 01 - CRT on; 02 - TV on;
0x000A: db/bit: Run time supported TV standards
0x000B: db/bit: Init time supported TV standards

CRC_zone:
0x0000: crc1
0x0008: checksum1
0x0020: crc2
0x0028: checksum2

- JW

[KlaasBaas]

Well because, the device ID the driver is checking, is not derived from the bios.

But from a little chip on the device which is not programmable.
It's called the ASIC code.

Do a google query on this and you will find out more.


I read somewhere that peope did Firegl Bios flash in their
8500. But the image ogt grabbled.

BTW sended the info/drivers to those that asked for it.

[DummyPLUG]

can I have the info also?
I try to hack it myself, but fail at fglrxm.sys, I am not sure which byte to change, and what is the first byte it change, I guess it is a address, but seems not..

dummyplug@i-cable.com

[JCLW]

KlaasBaas:

The ASIC is also the device ID is BIOS. It was just a thought.

Can you help me at all with the Win2000 drivers? I can't figure out what the last change should be

So far I've got:

In fglrxgl.dll
@offset 0x000CAE88 change “48” to “4C”

In fglrxm.sys
@offset 0x00000130 change "30" to ""
@offset 0x00042034 change “48” to “4C”
@offset 0x00042036 change “80” to “00”

- JW

PS do you mind sending me the WinXP ones you did + the info/instructions so I can have a look at them? (click here) If you'd like I can probably host them so you don't have to keep emailing them.

[KlaasBaas]

I need more details on the;

In fglrxm.sys
@offset 0x00000130 change "30" to ""


coz we need to extrac x7c from this compleet field.

I asked somebody to send me the .dll and .sys for
win2k so i can do it myself.


It's the checksum field that nocks you all down now.
You need a little bit of assembly knowledge for this.
And the math of hexadicimal nrs.

Anyway i send you the files for WinXP, and you may host them
of course. But plz mention my name for the effort in it :-)