---------- Original message ---------- Subject: G5 Graphics Card Date: Thursday, 17. January 2013 From: "Da'Birdman" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] > Do any of you know if a NVidia GeForce 7300GT video from a MacIntel Mac Pro > tower will work in a G5 Quad Core tower (or, for that matter, any other > non-MacIntel tower)? Thanking you in advance.
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 -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, 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] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
