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I recently acquired an old PowerMac, and I'd like to stick a FireWire, and second NIC card in there. Can I pop them out of an x86 box, and just use them? Are there any issues with going from little endian to big endian?

If you run Linux on that box virtually certain it would work, Mac OS X is another story.

I have Yellow Dog on it at the moment. I just don't want to fry one of my PCI cards. It is true that I can't swap in an x86 video card, right? Not without doing some modification I hear.

Wally Balljacker wrote:I have Yellow Dog on it at the moment. I just don't wan't to fry one of my PCI cards.

Understandable, a friend of mine is too good of an example, he frieds 768 MB of RAM, the fool!

Wally Balljacker wrote:It is true that I can't swap in an x86 video card, right? Not without doing some modification I hear.

You should be able to do that, because Linux has drivers for them, even though Apple sells their crap at a higher price, doesn't mean that they're not standard AGP/PCI-express/PCI cards, which they are.

Even Apple comply with standards at times.

Wally Balljacker wrote:I have Yellow Dog on it at the moment. I just don't want to fry one of my PCI cards. It is true that I can't swap in an x86 video card, right? Not without doing some modification I hear.

I know that at least a few years ago, PCI video cards came in 2 versions, Apple and PC. It was a big/little endian thing.

This may no longer be the case, or it may be something Linux can work around.