[Gabe86]

Hello,

I have an older PowerMac G3 Desktop 233Mhz that I want to use as a Linux box. I have done a few things to it, including adding an additional hdd, overclocked the CPU to 300Mhz, added RAM, and installed 10.3.9 via Xpostfacto all on stock hardware, but I'm looking to add a new graphics card and was wondering.

Since I will be running Linux, can I buy a non-efi graphics card that is hardware compatible with the mac, and us it in Linux?

Any info on this would be great. Thanks

[Big Mac]

Power Macs use Open Firmware - EFI is the Intel Mac firmware standard. That's quite an old Mac, and at this point GPU options are very limited. If you can find a card that works on the Mac side it will probably work on Linux.

[Gabe86]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Power Macs use Open Firmware - EFI is the Intel Mac firmware standard. That's quite an old Mac, and at this point GPU options are very limited. If you can find a card that works on the Mac side it will probably work on Linux.

Good to know thanks. I forgot about open firmware. But I want to know if a PC graphics card will be recognized in Linux on this machine. Or if some hardware conflict will occur as it would on an Intel Mac.

[Big Mac]

Ah, yeah, I'm not entirely sure.

[mduell]

No. Regular off the shelf PC graphics cards won't work, EFI graphics cards for Intel Macs won't work. Only cards designed to work with Apple's implementation of OpenFirmware (so cards for OpenFirmware Sun boxes won't work either) will work. Options for any PPC (including G5) are very limited these days. The only thing I can think of for you is a PCI Radeon 7000 Mac Edition which runs about $30 on fleabay and $90 from the few merchants who claim to have one.

What's your goal here? Even a nettop would give you dramatically better performance and compatibility, and the power savings would pay for it in a year.

[Gabe86]

Originally Posted by mduell 

No. Regular off the shelf PC graphics cards won't work, EFI graphics cards for Intel Macs won't work. Only cards designed to work with Apple's implementation of OpenFirmware (so cards for OpenFirmware Sun boxes won't work either) will work. Options for any PPC (including G5) are very limited these days. The only thing I can think of for you is a PCI Radeon 7000 Mac Edition which runs about $30 on fleabay and $90 from the few merchants who claim to have one.

What's your goal here? Even a nettop would give you dramatically better performance and compatibility, and the power savings would pay for it in a year.

Thanks for the info. I figured it wouldn't be that simple. It is after all a Mac! ; )

No goal really. Just looking for an excuse to use it again. The RAM for it is dirt cheap now and I wanted to see if I could sidestep the ATI 9200 Mac Edition by getting a comparable PC card for a quarter of the price. It's pretty painful with stock graphics running anything beyond 9.2 so the latest Linux must be even worse. I've looked at the 7000... may be my only choice.

Is there a way to reflash the firmware to something else? Anything?

[reader50]

The official answer is the Radeon 7000 or 9200 PCI cards. Neither is made today, so the choices are used cards or flashed cards. The flashing community has both, along with a GeForce FX5200 PCI (OS X only) that may work.

[Todd Madson]

Check http://www.old-macs.com/. I was very pleased with the Geforce7800GS SC card I bought from Christian at Old Macs to keep my G5 alive.

[Gabe86]

Originally Posted by reader50 

The official answer is the Radeon 7000 or 9200 PCI cards. Neither is made today, so the choices are used cards or flashed cards. The flashing community has both, along with a GeForce FX5200 PCI (OS X only) that may work.

Wow, I didn't even know that FX card existed for my machine. I thought the 5200 was an AGP card for the G5?

[reader50]

It was released for the G5 as an AGP card. But the flashing people claim to have developed a modified 5200 ROM that is PCI and AGP compatible. Then flashed it on a generic FX 5200 card.

[Gabe86]

Thanks Reader, duell, Big Mac. Much appreciated.