[G4] firmware: update needed?

[Eric Smith]

Skygram wrote:

> Whereas the retail versions of of any iteration of OS-X will work on any
> Mac. Lately there are limits to which generation of Mac that Leopard will
> work with. However I have been reading that there are tweaks to also make it
> functional on any Mac.

Well, "any Mac" is going a bit too far. :)  Leopard requires an Intel,
G5, or better than 867 MHz G4 CPU, plus 512MB or more of RAM. There are
workarounds to override the the G4 processor speed requirement but not,
as far as I know, the memory size requirement.* Of course trying to run
Leopard with less than 512MB of RAM is probably a bad idea anyway.

There are some other general requirements - a DVD drive, 9GB or more free
disk space. And some Leopard apps require specific HW as well. For example
Time Machine, Front Row and DVD Player require a graphics card that supports
Core Image.

* One way to run Leopard on an under-spec'd system would be to install it
on a conforming system and then simply move the disk to another machine.

Eric