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Radeon Firmware update may fix frozen cursor, other issues
On Monday, ATI released the Radeon Display 4.4 update for the following cards:
- Radeon 9800 PRO MAC EDITION
- Radeon 9800 PRO MAC SPECIAL EDITION
- Radeon 9200 MAC EDITION
- Radeon 9000 PRO MAC EDITION
- Radeon 8500 MAC EDITION
- Radeon 7000 MAC EDITION
- Radeon MAC EDITION (AGP and PCI)
According to the release notes, the new update provides OpenGL overrides for a number of game titles. However, MacFixIt reader Frederico notes some additional, worthwhile improvements and bug fixes:
"Not sure if anyone remembers discussion awhile back about dead cursors on otherwise live machines, sluggish or delayed cursor movements, blank screens on wake under certain configurations, and other issues, but I have apparently resolved some and perhaps all of them on my machine with the ATi updates of 20 September 2004.
"I've had a bit over 24 hours now to test the new ATI Radeon firmware and control software in my G4-533 DA/1.5BG/Radeon 8500 AGP/(2)Radeon 7K/(6) CRT PowerMac.
"[...] The first big confirmed fix was blank screens on wake. It had gotten pretty bad since Mac OS X 10.3.3, and I had gotten to the point where I had set sleep to 'Never', to avoid a condition where waking from deep sleep after long periods in sleep (could not reliably trigger by just executing sleep then immediately waking or even waiting up to 30 minutes) would result in totally blank screens, but a fully functioning machine hiding in the dark behind.[...] This condition now appears to be fully fixed.
"[...] The second issue I had been seeing was an intermittent, partial or complete loss of cursor control, typically on reentry from screensaver login. I thought I had it narrowed down to the Dock and SystemUI server (killing one or both of these always seemed to return control; at the most, a logout/login was required).
"Another issue happily disposed of is one where the secondary display on each of my two Radeon 7000 cards, despite being identical to the primary displays of each card, showed fewer available resolutions, and failed to properly identify themselves. I had believed that problem to be an issue with the DVI-VGA adapters killing the identification signal (what is that called again?), but turns out it was firmware, because they now properly ID themselves and I can get to more and better resolutions than before.
"Yet another issue that appears to be gone is now where on about two of every three reboots, especially when coming up from a cold-start, I would lose the set arrangement of my six CRT screens (three over three with the primary on lower-center). I have been cringing for nearly the whole run of OS X every time I had to shutdown or reboot (typically only for updates requiring it or testing applications I write), knowing I would probably have to spend a few or more annoying minutes rearranging all my screens, and going through tedious resets of window display prefs for apps that are poorly written for multiple screens. So far, after testing around a dozen cold starts and standard reboots, my display arrangement has managed to survive on all attempts. That alone was worth the cost of the update. [...]"
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
Resources
monitors on their Macs, but six? I'd just have to be curious what this person
does with six monitors on their Mac.
down power button etc "panel upon booting. It's a G3, with a Sonnet 1GhzG4
upgrade, running 10.3.5, otherwise happily.
Don't know how to get out, already tried a PRAM-reset, same result.
tobias
Sounds like a kernel panic. Did you upgrade to version 4.4 of the ATI drivers
before applying the ROM update? If not, shut down, remove the card, boot
using the original video card, install the drivers, shut down, install the ATI
card, restart. If you still have a problem, you should send an email to ATI.
I have been very confused by ATI and their drivers for the Radeon 9800 Pro
Mac Special Edition. Their web site says that the drivers are for Mac OS X
10.2.8 and 10.3.3 ONLY. They are not for 10.3, 10.3.1, 10.3.2, or 10.3.4 and
above. There is no clarification as to whether or not the latest drivers address
this issue. So, my card is still in it's box until I can figure it out.
using a Radeon 9000 Pro on my G4 w/Princeton Graphics 19" flat panel. The
first thing that I noticed is that the screen no longer reboots to black. Also,
there is no flickering between black screen and correct resolution at startup.
HOWEVER, all of this is at a small cost. The reboot time has now increased
about 50-75%. I applaud ATI for the effort, as in the past their updates
have not proven to be very effective. It does appear that they have made a
solid effort to correct all of the past problems. However, I would appreciate if
they would keep working on it and resolve the slow boot time.
- by thecodex September 29, 2004 2:46 PM PDT
- I installed the radeon-universal-update last night for my problematic
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(6 Comments)blank screen on cold restart (or even blank screen from sleep) situation
and the fix did NOT work for my: Dual G5, Card: ATY, RV350, bus: AGP,
VRAM 64MB, ROM Revision: 113-A13601-126.
It took 14 power button starts to get video this morning. My normal
cold start or (trying to wake from sleep) blank screen tries is anywhere
from one time to usually seven times. Any suggestions? I'm still under
a one-year warranty. Send it back? Tell repair to switch to a GeForceMX card
instead?
Maybe I've got two (or 3) problems now and all need to be fixed.
OTHERWISE I LOVE MY DUAL G5.
I did (just now) switch my sleep configuration from 15 minutes, 15 minutes
check: Put Hard Disk to sleep. To: Never, Never uncheck: Put hard disk to
sleep.