The BIOS on the card is there to provide services to the machine _BEFORE_ an OS has loaded drivers for it. The BIOS also provides an interface to the driver to interogate the card about what it is.
It is possible for the host to emulate an x86 so that it can use the cards built in BIOS so that it can load a driver. Ive heard talk of this before for Macs. [edit] It would be slow untill the drive loaded. But thats not a big deal.
What is unfortunate is that openfirmware defines a standard for writing low level BIOS software in forth, so that it can be run on any architecture. Im not sure if Mac cards use an open firmware BIOS, or just a PPC BIOS. But I think it is a real shame that there wasnt a lot of pressure to move the x86 side of the fence to open firmware.
I agree! It doesn't help Apple's bottom line when a lot of people want to buy a PC that has the potential to be upgraded.
But the iMacs still sell a ton as do the iBooks, eMacs, and PowerBooks.
If you want a Mac that has the potential to add, or upgrade components the PowerMac is/was for you.
The G4's had 3 open PCI's, and room for 4 Drives. There are PC's that have a ton more, but that is usually enough to suffice. The G5 enclosure is another thing entirely because of the cooling issues. That may, or may not change with the new cooler processors, (we'll find out) but It definitely needs room for more drive expansion. 600GB isn't what it used to be. The graphics card thing I don't think is Apples doing. If your insinuating that Apple is purposely trying to keep video card upgrades out of the hands of it's faithful, and potential customers that is obviously a ridiculously stupid tactic to keep, and gain return customers. I doubt the business professionals at Apple are that stupid. That paranoid re-sales reasoning argument that I read in here is so preposterous it's almost funny.
As it is with anything in any type of sales your best move is to try and give your customer what they want when they want it. That's what keeps them happy, and coming back. Apple wants customers to come back, not abandon the platform because something else is better, or has some options that should be available, but isn't.
Given that ATi and (I believe) nVIDIA now have unified drivers as well (in the sense that they have one driver codebase that drives all their cards for any given platform), I think the main thing holding back the retail graphics card offerings for the Mac is the near-total lack of a market.
Ati's and nvidia's unified drivers are only for windows.
the problem is really like the chicken and the egg. For PCs maybe 50% have AGP slots and 10% of the people upgrade their video cards. So we are looking at about a 5% market for replacement video cards on the PC side.
But on the Apple side, only 15% of all macs sold even have the option to upgrade the video cards...and a smaller percentage ever do...be honest...most people are still thinking about upgrading the RAM on the original imacs. So lets say 5% of the Apple users want to swap the video cards. So we are looking at .75% of the apple market needs an upgradeable video card. And that is chump change. When apple sells more macs with upgradeable video options...it will be an option to upgrade. You need an AGP slot before you can have stuff to put there. Like USB ports. When imacs came out nothing utilized USB. As mnore imacs sold, and more computers had it, there were USB devices.
The operative word here is OLD. There have been 3 major paradigm shifts in graphics cards since that card was on the market. It didn't even outlive OS 9
Todays graphics cards do not suffer the drawbacks that card did. It has been pointed out 3 times since your first post that the only difference in graphics cards for MAC/PC today is a little bit of code in the cards EPROM and some driver software.
According to this site this card is compatible with PC, Unix, & Mac. The OEM doesn't specifically state that it will work. But if it did, You probably wouldn't get any use of the extra features of the card without Windows. This was only 1 of several allegedly cross-platform cards listed on this site. There may be much more available to us than we realize. Due simply to the fact that no effort is placed on marketing these aspects of the cards.
The operative word here is OLD. There have been 3 major paradigm shifts in graphics cards since that card was on the market. It didn't even outlive OS 9
Todays graphics cards do not suffer the drawbacks that card did. It has been pointed out 3 times since your first post that the only difference in graphics cards for MAC/PC today is a little bit of code in the cards EPROM and some driver software.
According to this site this card is compatible with PC, Unix, & Mac. The OEM doesn't specifically state that it will work. But if it did, You probably wouldn't get any use of the extra features of the card without Windows. This was only 1 of several allegedly cross-platform cards listed on this site. There may be much more available to us than we realize. Due simply to the fact that no effort is placed on marketing these aspects of the cards.
That's an interesting link. Thanks for the heads up. Gainward is the company that manufactures the Nvidia pro graphics cards that come in PowerMacs I believe. But, I have to question the actual compatibility of that card being that I never new it was available . I'm going to email them after I get off work today. (Saturday) I wonder if they have actually tested it in a PowerMac, and what the results were that came of it. Nvidia's chips, or GPU has been completely cross-platform compatible for the past few years, and I'm wondering if that is why they are listing it as compatible. Basically I'm skeptical, but if it truly does run on a Mac thank you Gainward. You should have advertised, or at least informed a Mac news site about it. Although it's a fairly new card. But it is a better/faster video card than ATI's best right now. I wonder if they make Quadro's?
Does anyone know why exactly apple moved to AGP? I was always under the impression that it was supposed to herald a new era of choice for Mac users. by aopting the same standard as PCs 3rd party developers would be able to produce agp cards for mac and pc far more cheaply than say a proprietry technology right?
That's the argument for not having dedicated apple made super graphics like the SGI Cobalt subsystem right?
From what I can see we've had no real benefit from AGP as compared to the PC market.
so my question is this:
Given that most of us that want better graphics subsystem haven't really got much choice why doesn't apple dump AGP and develop its own custom killer graphics subsystem?
I always thought that the whole Raycer thing would lead to this.
Interesting points some people have brought out but let me ask everyone here why has ATI not released the retail version of Radeon 9600Pro now available only for the G5? Non-G5 Macs won't be able to use it in AGP 8X mode but big deal. The 9600 is backwards compatible for AGP 4X and should work unmodified in the MDD's or other. Granted there may, and that's only a very small may, be some software driver tweaks for non-G5 Macs, but overall this card could easily be made available for retail sales. The only one to benefit would be ATI and not Apple. Therein is the problem IMO.
Does anyone know why exactly apple moved to AGP? I was always under the impression that it was supposed to herald a new era of choice for Mac users. by aopting the same standard as PCs 3rd party developers would be able to produce agp cards for mac and pc far more cheaply than say a proprietry technology right?
That's the argument for not having dedicated apple made super graphics like the SGI Cobalt subsystem right?
From what I can see we've had no real benefit from AGP as compared to the PC market.
so my question is this:
Given that most of us that want better graphics subsystem haven't really got much choice why doesn't apple dump AGP and develop its own custom killer graphics subsystem?
I always thought that the whole Raycer thing would lead to this.
then again, I'm usually wrong . . .
AGP has made a huge difference to the available video cards -- that's why Apple can use ATI and nVidia GPUs at all. If they went with a proprietary (or non-WinTel) solution like NuBus before then they would have to build their own GPU or beg (and pay) somebody else to develop GPUs just for them. Developing a modern GPU is increadibly expensive. ATI and nVidia both spend pretty much their entire budget in just this market, and they have accumulated and acquired a great of technical expertise over the last 10 years. For Apple to try jumping into that arena and competing would just be silly at this point. They did it 10 years ago but bailed out because that isn't the business that they should be in.
With only 2% of the market to recoup the costs from, it makes more sense to leverage the enormous R&D being done for the other 98%, don't you think?
I repeat for those not paying attention: ATI and other add-in board vendors aren't providing the card you want because they don't see enough of a market there to justify the expensive of marketing the product. It has virtually nothing to do with the R&D cost of the product -- that is already done for Apple's OEM deal. ATI already has a couple of add-in boards available, adding more won't get them significantly more sales. Very few Mac users upgrade their video cards, especially since Apple has the same units available in the BTO store.
onlooker: any news from gainward ? On the site you gave, there is no mention of MacOS compatibility...
I ended up emailing them right after I wrote that this morning. I probably wont get a reply until monday because the work week is over, but the actual site that says it's Mac compatible is the previous link this link It's the card at the top of the list. It says :
Gainward CoolFX PowerPack! Ultra/1800XP "Golden Sample" Graphics card - for Unix, Mac, PC - AGP 8x - 256 MB.
That's a GeForce FX 5950.
It would be awesome if it was totally Mac compatible.
Now I have to contact Alias because they don't have any GeForce FX cards tested on their hardware compatibility list yet.
[EDIT]=-> I'll edit this post rather than post another. As it is a great gaming card it is just that. Made for gaming, and not DCC, or 3D.
Even if this card is a fantastic graphics solution for gaming, and most the intensive graphics processing average joe will ever need it's still not intended for 3D. An optional high performance 3D card is what Apple needs to sell Mac's as capable, and competitive 3D workstations. Of course they are still missing some software like Maya Unlimited, and Deep-Paint, but if the hardware is there they will come. Regardless. The GF-FX 5950 Ultra is a great graphics card upgrade if it is compatible.
Even if this card is a fantastic graphics solution for gaming, and most the intensive graphics processing average joe will ever need it's still not intended for 3D. An optional high performance 3D card is what Apple needs to sell Mac's as capable, and competitive 3D workstations.
What, actually, is the practical and technical difference between the two kinds of cards? I don't work with 3D but I'm interested in the technology. Most of the numbers given for the average joe models seem to match the pro cards'.
Do people generally care about the driver certification? If so, then why - isn't OpenGL standard enough? Is there something about the certification that falls outside the OpenGL standards?
What, actually, is the practical and technical difference between the two kinds of cards? I don't work with 3D but I'm interested in the technology. Most of the numbers given for the average joe models seem to match the pro cards'.
Do people generally care about the driver certification? If so, then why - isn't OpenGL standard enough? Is there something about the certification that falls outside the OpenGL standards?
I'm trying to understand what you mean the best that I can, but some of it I'm not exactly sure what your saying. I take it your referring matching #'s for MHz, memory, and stuff.
I'm not an expert on drivers, firmware, GPU's, and all the stuff Nvidia does to their pro 3D cards, and GPU's to make them fully compatible with Maya, but after scanning the Alias forums, and various other related reading material for the past two hours on the subject it seems writing the drivers for an application with all the different rendering complexities such as Maya is quite an undertaking. I'm not even sure they use the same GPU, but that could also be a huge factor.
That's about all I can say because as I already stated I'm not an expert, and I really don't know more than what I've been reading other people say elsewhere to this point.
the problem is really like the chicken and the egg. For PCs maybe 50% have AGP slots and 10% of the people upgrade their video cards. So we are looking at about a 5% market for replacement video cards on the PC side.
But on the Apple side, only 15% of all macs sold even have the option to upgrade the video cards...and a smaller percentage ever do...be honest...most people are still thinking about upgrading the RAM on the original imacs. So lets say 5% of the Apple users want to swap the video cards. So we are looking at .75% of the apple market needs an upgradeable video card. And that is chump change. When apple sells more macs with upgradeable video options...it will be an option to upgrade. You need an AGP slot before you can have stuff to put there. Like USB ports. When imacs came out nothing utilized USB. As mnore imacs sold, and more computers had it, there were USB devices.
this is actually a very important issue that i hadn't seen clearly before. If Apple would make a design choice to implement graphics via an AGP slot on all (non-laptop) Macs, the market could fairly quickly grow, at least percent-wise.
of course, i'm curious to see when the first round of external, high-end video cards comes out. connect via firewire (or for you southerners, 'farwar'), and include a breakout box. do to graphics what's been done to audio. you also remove all of the heat and power issues from the case that way.
first of all, i'd bet that the 'Win/Mac/Unix' support is just generically put in there, as the "OS required" is clearly Windows.
Also, anyone else notice the coolest feature of the WinDVD software bundled with the Gainward card?
"User-defined Playback Duration (ex. If you have a 1.5 hours title, and you hope to finish the title playing during 1 hour air-trip, it can accelerate the playback in a non-sensible way.)"
i wonder what happens if you try to watch python's grail in 7 minutes?! does it start making sense? will David Byrne yell at you?
first of all, i'd bet that the 'Win/Mac/Unix' support is just generically put in there, as the "OS required" is clearly Windows.
"OS required is clearly windows? If it was clearly windows, and not Pc, Mac, and Unix (as listed) Why do some of the other cards not list Mac, and Unix only to say PC AGP? Here is the Summary specs for the GF FX 5900 Ultra that was also listed as Mac Compatible. , and here are the TechSpecs. It does clearly say it's Mac compatible in two places.
I'm not sure what in this link "Clearly" made you think they would just list Mac compatibility on two cards, and not the rest.
"OS required is clearly windows? If it was clearly windows, and not Pc, Mac, and Unix (as listed) Why do some of the other cards not list Mac, and Unix only to say PC AGP? Here is the Summary specs for the GF FX 5900 Ultra that was also listed as Mac Compatible. , and here are the TechSpecs. It does clearly say it's Mac compatible in two places.
I'm not sure what in this link "Clearly" made you think they would just list Mac compatibility on two cards, and not the rest.
Looks promising. Somebody ought to ask them to confirm and then give it a try. Hopefully they have a reasonable return policy, just in case.
Looks promising. Somebody ought to ask them to confirm and then give it a try. Hopefully they have a reasonable return policy, just in case.
I emailed them Saturday morning. I'm sure they'll get back to me on monday once the work week starts back up again. Once I get a return mailing I'll post all relevant information.
Comments
It is possible for the host to emulate an x86 so that it can use the cards built in BIOS so that it can load a driver. Ive heard talk of this before for Macs. [edit] It would be slow untill the drive loaded. But thats not a big deal.
What is unfortunate is that openfirmware defines a standard for writing low level BIOS software in forth, so that it can be run on any architecture. Im not sure if Mac cards use an open firmware BIOS, or just a PPC BIOS. But I think it is a real shame that there wasnt a lot of pressure to move the x86 side of the fence to open firmware.
Originally posted by tink
I agree! It doesn't help Apple's bottom line when a lot of people want to buy a PC that has the potential to be upgraded.
But the iMacs still sell a ton as do the iBooks, eMacs, and PowerBooks.
If you want a Mac that has the potential to add, or upgrade components the PowerMac is/was for you.
The G4's had 3 open PCI's, and room for 4 Drives. There are PC's that have a ton more, but that is usually enough to suffice. The G5 enclosure is another thing entirely because of the cooling issues. That may, or may not change with the new cooler processors, (we'll find out) but It definitely needs room for more drive expansion. 600GB isn't what it used to be.
As it is with anything in any type of sales your best move is to try and give your customer what they want when they want it. That's what keeps them happy, and coming back. Apple wants customers to come back, not abandon the platform because something else is better, or has some options that should be available, but isn't.
Originally posted by Amorph
Given that ATi and (I believe) nVIDIA now have unified drivers as well (in the sense that they have one driver codebase that drives all their cards for any given platform), I think the main thing holding back the retail graphics card offerings for the Mac is the near-total lack of a market.
Ati's and nvidia's unified drivers are only for windows.
But on the Apple side, only 15% of all macs sold even have the option to upgrade the video cards...and a smaller percentage ever do...be honest...most people are still thinking about upgrading the RAM on the original imacs. So lets say 5% of the Apple users want to swap the video cards. So we are looking at .75% of the apple market needs an upgradeable video card. And that is chump change. When apple sells more macs with upgradeable video options...it will be an option to upgrade. You need an AGP slot before you can have stuff to put there. Like USB ports. When imacs came out nothing utilized USB. As mnore imacs sold, and more computers had it, there were USB devices.
Originally posted by Antithesis
[B]
It is regarding an old, flashable VooDoo3 card.
The operative word here is OLD. There have been 3 major paradigm shifts in graphics cards since that card was on the market. It didn't even outlive OS 9
Todays graphics cards do not suffer the drawbacks that card did. It has been pointed out 3 times since your first post that the only difference in graphics cards for MAC/PC today is a little bit of code in the cards EPROM and some driver software.
Has anyone looked at one of these?
Geforce FX 5950 Ultra
According to this site this card is compatible with PC, Unix, & Mac. The OEM doesn't specifically state that it will work. But if it did, You probably wouldn't get any use of the extra features of the card without Windows. This was only 1 of several allegedly cross-platform cards listed on this site. There may be much more available to us than we realize. Due simply to the fact that no effort is placed on marketing these aspects of the cards.
Originally posted by Plague Bearer
The operative word here is OLD. There have been 3 major paradigm shifts in graphics cards since that card was on the market. It didn't even outlive OS 9
Todays graphics cards do not suffer the drawbacks that card did. It has been pointed out 3 times since your first post that the only difference in graphics cards for MAC/PC today is a little bit of code in the cards EPROM and some driver software.
Has anyone looked at one of these?
Geforce FX 5950 Ultra
According to this site this card is compatible with PC, Unix, & Mac. The OEM doesn't specifically state that it will work. But if it did, You probably wouldn't get any use of the extra features of the card without Windows. This was only 1 of several allegedly cross-platform cards listed on this site. There may be much more available to us than we realize. Due simply to the fact that no effort is placed on marketing these aspects of the cards.
That's an interesting link. Thanks for the heads up. Gainward is the company that manufactures the Nvidia pro graphics cards that come in PowerMacs I believe. But, I have to question the actual compatibility of that card being that I never new it was available . I'm going to email them after I get off work today. (Saturday) I wonder if they have actually tested it in a PowerMac, and what the results were that came of it. Nvidia's chips, or GPU has been completely cross-platform compatible for the past few years, and I'm wondering if that is why they are listing it as compatible. Basically I'm skeptical, but if it truly does run on a Mac thank you Gainward. You should have advertised, or at least informed a Mac news site about it. Although it's a fairly new card. But it is a better/faster video card than ATI's best right now. I wonder if they make Quadro's?
here is the homepage for that card at gainward
That's the argument for not having dedicated apple made super graphics like the SGI Cobalt subsystem right?
From what I can see we've had no real benefit from AGP as compared to the PC market.
so my question is this:
Given that most of us that want better graphics subsystem haven't really got much choice why doesn't apple dump AGP and develop its own custom killer graphics subsystem?
I always thought that the whole Raycer thing would lead to this.
then again, I'm usually wrong . . .
Originally posted by spooky
Does anyone know why exactly apple moved to AGP? I was always under the impression that it was supposed to herald a new era of choice for Mac users. by aopting the same standard as PCs 3rd party developers would be able to produce agp cards for mac and pc far more cheaply than say a proprietry technology right?
That's the argument for not having dedicated apple made super graphics like the SGI Cobalt subsystem right?
From what I can see we've had no real benefit from AGP as compared to the PC market.
so my question is this:
Given that most of us that want better graphics subsystem haven't really got much choice why doesn't apple dump AGP and develop its own custom killer graphics subsystem?
I always thought that the whole Raycer thing would lead to this.
then again, I'm usually wrong . . .
AGP has made a huge difference to the available video cards -- that's why Apple can use ATI and nVidia GPUs at all. If they went with a proprietary (or non-WinTel) solution like NuBus before then they would have to build their own GPU or beg (and pay) somebody else to develop GPUs just for them. Developing a modern GPU is increadibly expensive. ATI and nVidia both spend pretty much their entire budget in just this market, and they have accumulated and acquired a great of technical expertise over the last 10 years. For Apple to try jumping into that arena and competing would just be silly at this point. They did it 10 years ago but bailed out because that isn't the business that they should be in.
With only 2% of the market to recoup the costs from, it makes more sense to leverage the enormous R&D being done for the other 98%, don't you think?
I repeat for those not paying attention: ATI and other add-in board vendors aren't providing the card you want because they don't see enough of a market there to justify the expensive of marketing the product. It has virtually nothing to do with the R&D cost of the product -- that is already done for Apple's OEM deal. ATI already has a couple of add-in boards available, adding more won't get them significantly more sales. Very few Mac users upgrade their video cards, especially since Apple has the same units available in the BTO store.
Originally posted by knappa
onlooker: any news from gainward ? On the site you gave, there is no mention of MacOS compatibility...
I ended up emailing them right after I wrote that this morning. I probably wont get a reply until monday because the work week is over, but the actual site that says it's Mac compatible is the previous link this link It's the card at the top of the list. It says :
Gainward CoolFX PowerPack! Ultra/1800XP "Golden Sample" Graphics card - for Unix, Mac, PC - AGP 8x - 256 MB.
That's a GeForce FX 5950.
It would be awesome if it was totally Mac compatible.
Now I have to contact Alias because they don't have any GeForce FX cards tested on their hardware compatibility list yet.
[EDIT]=-> I'll edit this post rather than post another. As it is a great gaming card it is just that. Made for gaming, and not DCC, or 3D.
Even if this card is a fantastic graphics solution for gaming, and most the intensive graphics processing average joe will ever need it's still not intended for 3D. An optional high performance 3D card is what Apple needs to sell Mac's as capable, and competitive 3D workstations. Of course they are still missing some software like Maya Unlimited, and Deep-Paint, but if the hardware is there they will come. Regardless. The GF-FX 5950 Ultra is a great graphics card upgrade if it is compatible.
Originally posted by onlooker
Even if this card is a fantastic graphics solution for gaming, and most the intensive graphics processing average joe will ever need it's still not intended for 3D. An optional high performance 3D card is what Apple needs to sell Mac's as capable, and competitive 3D workstations.
What, actually, is the practical and technical difference between the two kinds of cards? I don't work with 3D but I'm interested in the technology. Most of the numbers given for the average joe models seem to match the pro cards'.
Do people generally care about the driver certification? If so, then why - isn't OpenGL standard enough? Is there something about the certification that falls outside the OpenGL standards?
Originally posted by Gon
What, actually, is the practical and technical difference between the two kinds of cards? I don't work with 3D but I'm interested in the technology. Most of the numbers given for the average joe models seem to match the pro cards'.
Do people generally care about the driver certification? If so, then why - isn't OpenGL standard enough? Is there something about the certification that falls outside the OpenGL standards?
I'm trying to understand what you mean the best that I can, but some of it I'm not exactly sure what your saying. I take it your referring matching #'s for MHz, memory, and stuff.
I'm not an expert on drivers, firmware, GPU's, and all the stuff Nvidia does to their pro 3D cards, and GPU's to make them fully compatible with Maya, but after scanning the Alias forums, and various other related reading material for the past two hours on the subject it seems writing the drivers for an application with all the different rendering complexities such as Maya is quite an undertaking. I'm not even sure they use the same GPU, but that could also be a huge factor.
That's about all I can say because as I already stated I'm not an expert, and I really don't know more than what I've been reading other people say elsewhere to this point.
Originally posted by jade
the problem is really like the chicken and the egg. For PCs maybe 50% have AGP slots and 10% of the people upgrade their video cards. So we are looking at about a 5% market for replacement video cards on the PC side.
But on the Apple side, only 15% of all macs sold even have the option to upgrade the video cards...and a smaller percentage ever do...be honest...most people are still thinking about upgrading the RAM on the original imacs. So lets say 5% of the Apple users want to swap the video cards. So we are looking at .75% of the apple market needs an upgradeable video card. And that is chump change. When apple sells more macs with upgradeable video options...it will be an option to upgrade. You need an AGP slot before you can have stuff to put there. Like USB ports. When imacs came out nothing utilized USB. As mnore imacs sold, and more computers had it, there were USB devices.
this is actually a very important issue that i hadn't seen clearly before. If Apple would make a design choice to implement graphics via an AGP slot on all (non-laptop) Macs, the market could fairly quickly grow, at least percent-wise.
of course, i'm curious to see when the first round of external, high-end video cards comes out. connect via firewire (or for you southerners, 'farwar'), and include a breakout box. do to graphics what's been done to audio. you also remove all of the heat and power issues from the case that way.
Also, anyone else notice the coolest feature of the WinDVD software bundled with the Gainward card?
"User-defined Playback Duration (ex. If you have a 1.5 hours title, and you hope to finish the title playing during 1 hour air-trip, it can accelerate the playback in a non-sensible way.)"
i wonder what happens if you try to watch python's grail in 7 minutes?! does it start making sense? will David Byrne yell at you?
Originally posted by concentricity
first of all, i'd bet that the 'Win/Mac/Unix' support is just generically put in there, as the "OS required" is clearly Windows.
"OS required is clearly windows? If it was clearly windows, and not Pc, Mac, and Unix (as listed) Why do some of the other cards not list Mac, and Unix only to say PC AGP? Here is the Summary specs for the GF FX 5900 Ultra that was also listed as Mac Compatible. , and here are the TechSpecs. It does clearly say it's Mac compatible in two places.
I'm not sure what in this link "Clearly" made you think they would just list Mac compatibility on two cards, and not the rest.
Originally posted by onlooker
"OS required is clearly windows? If it was clearly windows, and not Pc, Mac, and Unix (as listed) Why do some of the other cards not list Mac, and Unix only to say PC AGP? Here is the Summary specs for the GF FX 5900 Ultra that was also listed as Mac Compatible. , and here are the TechSpecs. It does clearly say it's Mac compatible in two places.
I'm not sure what in this link "Clearly" made you think they would just list Mac compatibility on two cards, and not the rest.
Looks promising. Somebody ought to ask them to confirm and then give it a try. Hopefully they have a reasonable return policy, just in case.
Originally posted by Programmer
Looks promising. Somebody ought to ask them to confirm and then give it a try. Hopefully they have a reasonable return policy, just in case.
I emailed them Saturday morning. I'm sure they'll get back to me on monday once the work week starts back up again. Once I get a return mailing I'll post all relevant information.