On Tue, 2004-06-29 at 05:35, Onno Benschop wrote: > > > I've heard that you have to flash the ROM (change the firmware) for > > > some cards, > > Uhm, a card and a hard-disk are *not* even close to being the same > thing. > > I have no evidence at all that any firmware modifications are needed for > any hard-disks.
I am extremely confused as to how you get the idea that I (or anyone else on this thread) was at any point suggesting that firmware modifications might be required to use non-Apple-supplied hard disks in macs. The only firmware tweaks I'm aware of for hard disks are used for failure simulation. Video cards, perhaps. Hard disks, I can't possibly imagine why. > If you are completely paranoid - which you should be - I > would recommend that you take your machine to the place where you are > thinking about purchasing a drive and testing it there. > > I would also bring a boot-able CD with me and a copy of the current > version of Drive Setup. That would seem a sensible approach to me, yes. > So, while a firmware change *might* be required for a brain-dead PCI or > AGP card - shoot the manufacturer, I wouldn't be too surprised if Open Firmware required different card firmware to boot with the card - in particular, a replacement for the VGA BIOS. It would seem to me that using VESA calls would be the sensible approach, but I don't know if that's what Open Firmware does, or in fact if VESA BIOSes are portable across CPU architectures. So it may not be the manufacturer's fault if a firmware change is in fact required. Of course, it could just as easily be drivers written only to work with the special "Mac edition" cards so they can charge more. > I am suspicious of any such > requirements for hard-disks and suspect either ill-informed users who > confuse the two, or ruthless dealers charging a premium for Macintosh > compatibility. I'm all too familiar with the latter. RAM, anybody? -- Craig Ringer
