I have a windows 95 laptop, that has pcmcia slots. Can anybody tell me if i can use a pcmcia card that was on a Mac powerbook (circa 1996). I believe the only difference is with software driver which i can get from the manufacturer website, but thought i would ask first. thanks in advance.
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Pcmcia Card
- Thread starter Call-151
- Start date
lyonadmiral
Veteran Member
I have a windows 95 laptop, that has pcmcia slots. Can anybody tell me if i can use a pcmcia card that was on a Mac powerbook (circa 1996). I believe the only difference is with software driver which i can get from the manufacturer website, but thought i would ask first. thanks in advance.
Should, with very few caveats like incompatible firmware on the card, work fine.
GiGaBiTe
Veteran Member
If the PCMCIA card doesn't have a BIOS on it, then it should work. Like PCI, PCMCIA / Cardbus cards sometimes have ROMs on them to configure the device with the system. If the ROM contains code written for PowerPC CPUs, it won't run on x86 CPUs.
A good example would be the Voodoo3, it had a BIOS available for both x86 and PowerPC and you had to flash the EEPROM on the card to go from one system to the other. However, addon cards like the Voodoo2 which had no onboard BIOS would work fine in either system as-is because it worked completely on driver support alone.
A good example would be the Voodoo3, it had a BIOS available for both x86 and PowerPC and you had to flash the EEPROM on the card to go from one system to the other. However, addon cards like the Voodoo2 which had no onboard BIOS would work fine in either system as-is because it worked completely on driver support alone.
I have a windows 95 laptop, that has pcmcia slots. Can anybody tell me if i can use a pcmcia card that was on a Mac powerbook (circa 1996). I believe the only difference is with software driver which i can get from the manufacturer website, but thought i would ask first. thanks in advance.
If you had a software driver, and it was not locked down to just mac, in theory yes. However you need to verify which type pcmia card it is, as they made many generations, in both 16 and 32 bit.