| Re: G5 Graphics Card [message #34056] |
Mon, 21 January 2013 11:47 |
Da'Birdman
Messages: 4
Registered: January 2013
Karma: 0
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Junior Member |
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Thanks, Andreas! Very informative.
Scott Birdwell
DeFalco's Home Wine & Beer Supplies
sales@defalcos.com
www.defalcos.com
On Jan 21, 2013, at 6:24 AM, g3-5-list@googlegroups.com wrote:
> I know you’ve already gotten your answer, but this seems noteably to me:
>
> Intel Mac graphics cards have an EFI based firmware on them, so they are
> compatible with the EFI based Intel macs. Otherwise the graphics card is
> identical to a Power Mac or PC version.
>
> Power Mac graphics cards have an Open Firmware based firmware on them.
>
> And PC graphics cards have BIOS based firmware on them, or newer cards maybe
> also have an EFI-aware firmware as well. But it’s propably different from the
> one used in Intel Macs.
>
>
> IF you can find an Open Firmware based firmware for that specific card, you
> can try to flash it. If none is available there is now way. And flashing is
> not so very trivial either.
>
>
> One thing is interesting though: I’ve once used a PC version of a graphics
> card in a Power Mac computer. Due to the BIOS based firmware, the computers’
> Open Firmware was unable to initialize it and the screen stayed dark. I booted
> into Linux (because that is what I used back then) and the Linux kernel
> detected this PCIe graphics card and loaded the appropriate driver and with it
> the card was initialized. So, once the operating system took over, it all
> worked even though it was the wrong firmware on the graphics card.
>
> On Mac OS X the graphics driver will not work though, because it has built-in
> logic to check for certain Open Firmware variables (or EFI variables, if
> you’re on Intel). In other words, it relies on Open Firmware (or EFI on Intel)
> to initialize the card and takes over from there. Mac OS X will therefor never
> work with an identical graphics card that has the wrong firmware on it.
>
>
> Just to make things more complicated, I guess…
>
> Cheers,
> Andreas aka Mac User #330250
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