Power Mac 4400 with Rage 128 and Mac OS 8.1 - is it possible?

XodiumRetro

Tinkerer
Oct 25, 2021
54
100
33
Central Coast, California
xodium.net
So, in an effort to have a bit of fun I pilfered the Rage 128 out of my G3 B/W to see how ridiculous I could make my 4400. The only problem is...despite some things being "better" (I can do millions of colors at 1024x768 now!) unfortunately...everything else is lackluster. Finder redraws windows horribly slow, games like Full Tilt Pinball run about as fast as a slideshow (and runs the same on built in video). I currently have it sitting on 8.5.3.

I've installed the various ATI update packages and whatnot, no change.

I've been told I should bump this machine up to 8.6 and that should fix it, HOWEVER I am trying to avoid that mostly because I'm trying to stagger my Mac OS installs and I already have an 8.6 machine--the very G3 the card came out of. So if I had to bump this machine to 8.6...I'd actually probably be better off just sticking the card back in the G3 and using that instead. (With the absolutely glorious 1.5GB of RAM it has! Heh.)

So I'm wondering if it's possible to get this working under 8.1 at all, or if I'm just out of luck and should probably pull the card and stick it back into the poor G3.
 

aradiogurl

Tinkerer
Oct 30, 2021
24
49
13
Florida’s Space Coast
I ran a Rage 128 in my 4400 in '99/00 and in my current 4400. I usually run MacOS 8.6/9 on my system, but the rage 128 is supposed to support System 7.5.x and up and I've had it working in 8.1 (before I broke my 8.1 install playing around with my VooDoo 1). I'm assuming that you used the ATI Universal Installer 4.2, that is supposed to be the correct one. I don't recall offhand what magic mix I had to use, but I think I had to first reinstall Mac OS 8/8.1, upgrade Quicktime, then install the video drivers and opengl.
 
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XodiumRetro

Tinkerer
Oct 25, 2021
54
100
33
Central Coast, California
xodium.net
I ran a Rage 128 in my 4400 in '99/00 and in my current 4400. I usually run MacOS 8.6/9 on my system, but the rage 128 is supposed to support System 7.5.x and up and I've had it working in 8.1 (before I broke my 8.1 install playing around with my VooDoo 1). I'm assuming that you used the ATI Universal Installer 4.2, that is supposed to be the correct one. I don't recall offhand what magic mix I had to use, but I think I had to first reinstall Mac OS 8/8.1, upgrade Quicktime, then install the video drivers and opengl.
Upgrading QuickTime and OpenGL might have been the missing link I forgot. I need to roll back and try it again. I was also using the ATI Installer 4.0.1 I believe. Didn’t even know there was a 4.2!

Well, I know what I’m working on tonight.
 
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