On Oct 9, 2008, at 12:42 PM, Dan wrote:
> *shrug* My impression from talking to a friend (a chip engineer) is > that nothing gets passed/done without Intel's nod. They cough and > the spec rattles. IBM controlled the DRAM specs for the early Power Architectured Macs. Remember: PowerPC is an IBM-owned architecture. Every IBM-made stick I've had worked (these were usually assembled in Canada from USA components). It is the non-IBM sticks which one has to worry about. By the time Apple had gone to the G3 (which chip was made by IBM and Moto/Freescale) [ * ] IBM had gotten out of the commodity RAM business, but it was still making loads of RAM for its servers, which still used the older EDO/FPM spec. Apple was thereby forced to design its own DRAM controller, and it elected to use PC66 SDRAM. Later, it specified PC100 and PC133 SDRAM as its products matured. Of course Intel has influence, but even that influence has bounds. When Intel expressed a strong preference for a certain family of RAM, and that RAM had component availability, component cost or licensing issues which increased the system cost, the end-users (PeeCee manufacturers) put their collective feet down and said, "Enough!". The present status-quo is Intel's G31/ICH7 and P35/ICH9 and related chipsets accept just about any DDR2 RAM without complaint. The BIOSes are getting pretty smart, too, and some can accept wildly different component configurations, yet still work correctly and, indeed, optimally. [ * ] Although the G3 is "dead" as a standalone chip, it is now widely used in so-called "imbedded" applications. My foreign-made SUV has four G3-equivalent computers within its various systems, including engine control, environmental, stability, safety and security systems. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
