[OT] Dead video card

[Mark Wieder]

Jeff-

Monday, August 16, 2010, 3:39:01 PM, you wrote:

> Guys, it's just hardware. If there's no code to run it on the hardware, then
> yes, it won't work. But, there's no such thing as a a piece of hardware that
> cannot possibly interface with another piece of hardware. One could make an
> ATI video card be run from a Z80 micro processor if one felt so inclined.
> It's just bytes and cycles, and maybe a little soldering. ;-)

Sorry, Jeff, but these days (the last 20 years or so) cards have some
bootup code in the firmware. PCI cards in particular run a variant of
Forth known as Open Firmware that's initialized and run from the
motherboard. It's supposed to be manufacturer-neutral, but not
required to be so. Some cards are supported on macs, some are
supported with firmware upgrades, some manufacturers have trouble
spelling macintosh.

Point taken about the soldering <g>.

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwieder at ahsoftware.net