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This is a post in the Project Maya series. To see all related posts go to the index page here.

No, I didn’t mess up and accidentally named this post the same as the previous one. And no, you’re not seeing double. I am upgrading the graphics card yet again.

The ATI Radeon 9600 performs really well, handling the games I play without issue but it being a card designed for the G5, it simply doesn’t get enough airflow in the MDD and overheats. I need a graphics card that is equally powerful or better, with it’s own fan. So this time, an ATI Radeon X850 Pro 256MB was suggested to me by the notoriously bad influence Greg Hrutkay.

Available for less then $10 with less than a day to go, I made a bid. A day later, the card was mine for $27 shipped.

But this card doesn’t work in my MDD, it needs a firmware flash. Flashing the firmware requires a replacement of the EEPROM chip as the stock chip is 64K and will therefor be too small to hold the mac ATI firmware for this card.

This is right up Collin Mistr’s wheelhouse so after the payment was made, the seller will ship it straight to Collin’s house. And that is where we’re at now, waiting for the card to arrive at Collin’s and for him to work his magic. If you’re curious what this process is like, check out one of his videos where he does this to the exact same card:

I’ll report back once the card is ready to go into the MDD, stay tuned 🙂

Update:
And thus this chapter ends…. for now 😉