Re: PCI PC/Hardware in Yosemite Powermac
Hi Robin,
I'm using standard PC cards (USB, Firewire, Network Interface) with my
Umax Pulsar without any problem - and this includes OS X. As a
guideline, you should make sure that the card (or chipset) is
supported by Linux in general, and that the code required is part of
the mainstream kernel. Any patches required might hack the kernel in a
x86 specific way.
Of course the card won't be recognised by the systems OpenFirmware, so
you can't boot from any device connected to it. What definetely won't
work are PCI cards that contain a BIOS and do specific
initializations. Cards with their own BIOSes are IDE RAID adaptors,
for example. So I'm not sure if that applies to your Serial ATA card.
If you're unsure, it would be the best to choose a dealer who allows
you to return a card that doesn't work in your setup. Even if you pay
more for a card, you're saving yourself the pain of having an unusable
card at home.
Additionally, it's not a bad idea to choose PCI cards that are older,
and thus maybe better supported. I recently had a USB2 card that was
supposed to work even with OS X (driver was included), but the card
failed every time a USB2 device was connected to it. I'm still waiting
for a reply of the dealer where I purchased the card...
HTH,
Christian
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