[mjg59]

I don't think that's true? Macs were running Open Firmware, they had an expectation of the same Forth code that Suns made use of, and several cards needed to be flashed with Apple firmware to be Mac compatible. Alphas definitely ran x86 video card init code under emulation, though.

[BuildTheRobots]

iirc, the OpenFirmware boot image was larger than the equivalent BIOS image - I've got half a memory of resoldering ROM chips on ATi cards so they could be cross-flashed to work in G3/G4 PoweMacs.

[actionfromafar]

I probably misremembered Alphas.

[mjg59]

Very easy things to confiate given we're talking about hardware that's on the order of 30 years old!