Bootcamp.

[BoomAM]

Hi.
Ive got a few questions regarding bootcamp.
Lets say i was to buy a mac x86. I install bootcamp, make a partition for XP, install XP through bootcamp.
Am i then limited to the drivers that Apple provide for the hardware? or will it pretty much function as a 'normal' computer in every regards?
Are the video cards used in the new Macs still Mac only? Or can i now use any old video card?

Also, the reason XP cant boot without bootcamp is because Macs use an EFI bios. Vista supports EFI bios's. So would it be possible in the future to have a dual boot between OSX & Vista?, or would there be something preventing me from doing this?

Curiosity really...

 

[MikeHowett]

Hi.
Ive got a few questions regarding bootcamp.
Lets say i was to buy a mac x86. I install bootcamp, make a partition for XP, install XP through bootcamp.
Am i then limited to the drivers that Apple provide for the hardware? or will it pretty much function as a 'normal' computer in every regards?
Are the video cards used in the new Macs still Mac only? Or can i now use any old video card?

Also, the reason XP cant boot without bootcamp is because Macs use an EFI bios. Vista supports EFI bios's. So would it be possible in the future to have a dual boot between OSX & Vista?, or would there be something preventing me from doing this?

Curiosity really...

No support for EFI in Vista

This thread should answer your question regarding PC GFX cards in the new Mac Pros.

You should be able to find the answers to all your questions regarding windows on the mac here

 

[BoomAM]

Thanks for the links:

No support for EFI in Vista

'...Revealed that there will never be any support for booting Windows via EFI on systems with 32-bit processors.'
Contradictory news story that?

This thread should answer your question regarding PC GFX cards in the new Mac Pros.

According to that thread, the new BIOS's allow native XP installations without bootcamp at all. Which is pretty cool, as then we're not limited by Apple's Drivers.
Aparentely its possible to install a PC GFX card in a MacPro. OSX sees both but only uses the 'Mac' GFX card, where as XP sees both, uses the PC GFX card, but crashes if it trys to use the 'Mac' GFX card.

 

[BillytheImpaler]

Are the video cards used in the new Macs still Mac only? Or can i now use any old video card?

The only ,mac that will take an add-on video card is the Mac Pro, the dual dual core workstation released last week. It only takes "Mac" video cards, IIRC, becasue Macs integrate a USB hub in their video cards so that the monitor needs only one cable, rather than one for power, one for USB, and one for DVI.

 

[MikeHowett]

It only takes "Mac" video cards, IIRC, becasue Macs integrate a USB hub in their video cards so that the monitor needs only one cable, rather than one for power, one for USB, and one for DVI.

No, that's not true at all. The single white cord, which meets the glossy white power brick splits into signal, power, USB and FireWire cables; and the DVI connector.

This is why PC GFX cards do not work in OSX:

Any standard PCI Express card bought from retail stores will work in the Mac Pro with proper firmware and drivers. The PCI Express standard designates the card will identify itself with a particular device ID after which the OS will match dev id and load the driver. In the case of a graphics card, a driver needs to be loaded in EFI in order to display graphics even before the OS loads (i.e. the white background, the Firewire Target Disk Mode graphics). Graphics cards are a problematic issue as it takes a considerable amount of software work to come up with the final shipping-quality firmware and drivers.

It is theoretically possible for a PCI Express graphics card to contain firmware for both Windows/BIOs and Mac/EFI but in reality this is unlikely given the extra expense to develop EFI drivers. (there may also be a space issue fitting both sets of codes on the ROM chip on the graphics card)

Moreover, you need an OS X driver and again due to how closely nVidia or ATI guards their IP, they won't let anyone else but themselves write the driver. Finally in order to write the EFI firmware and OS X driver they need to work closely with Apple too. (in particular the drivers are often not installed separately but for ease for the customer, they are bundled with the OS X version - i.e. the OS X version that comes with the Mac Pro has built-in drivers for the 3 cards).

Even if someone wrote the driver, etc. there is still some need to test. A lot of operations in OS X like sleep/wake and startup require fairly complex operations done by both the firmware and the driver. It is a given that the first attempt to write a driver will have kernel panics, black screen hangs, graphics corruption, etc. due to various bugs in the driver.
In order to iron out this bugs, and build confidence in the combination of hardware and software, a lot of testing over thousands or hundreds of thousands of hours have to be done.

The end result though is pleasantly since ATI and nVidia tend to make their cards quite similar (within a family), a driver written for one card may work for another card (i.e. the nVidia 7300GT and Quadro FX 4500 drivers are quite similar, so is the Radeon X1900 and the Radeon X1600 driver). Still, there exists the tricky issue of the firmware on the card so because of that its probably unlikely you can ever slot in a PC card and have it work unless you also reflash the Mac to use BIOS instead of EFI (which, is again a major undertaking that we don't ever expect an end-user to figure how to because then you can't boot OS X which seems to defeat the purpose of buying a Mac.)

 

[BoomAM]

The only ,mac that will take an add-on video card is the Mac Pro, the dual dual core workstation released last week. It only takes "Mac" video cards, IIRC, becasue Macs integrate a USB hub in their video cards so that the monitor needs only one cable, rather than one for power, one for USB, and one for DVI.

Not entirely true. But its explained above.
The older macs are like that though.