What connector for replacement superdrive - Mac Pro early 2008?

I have the 2.8 Quad-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro with the notoriously crap "super"drive. Naturally it failed when I wanted to install Snow Leopard. I want to replace it - solely for the purpose of this install - but for the life of me I cannot find what type of connector I need in a replacement drive. About this Mac says the optical drive "Interconnect" is ATAPI. ***? I think that means it's IDE, or EIDE, whatever the **** those are. Can anyone advise me on this? And perhaps what replacement to buy? Many thanks!

ATAPI and EIDE and IDE are essentailly the same for this purpose, and are talking about a 40-pin ribbon cable connector and a four-pin Molex power connector. Macsales.com can usually provide what you want.
The 2008 model used that same connector, but there is a Hedge inside on the motherboard nearby. Folks call these the ODD connectors (for Oprical Disk Drive) and they are two uncommitted SATA data-only connectors that can be accessed if you wnat to bad enough. Macsales sells a kit for this purpose.

Similar Messages

  • Difference between mac pro early 2008 and 2008

    What is the difference between mac pro early 2008 and 2008? There are specs warning me it won't work on early 2008 but it will on 2008 models when I'm looking for components to buy. Is this true?

    Not true.
    There is 3,1, there was nothing else.
    you can pull up Apple Support Mac Pro specs easy enough and tell by RAM speed and other items - or go to Everymac.com even.
    All we need and what you could have done is taken the top line of System Profile that tells the model.

  • What's the best graphic card for FCP X and a Mac Pro (early) 2008?

    I have a Radeon HD 3870 in my Mac Pro, it seems that I cannot use this configuration with Final Cut Pro X. Then what's the best graphic card for FCP X usable in a Mac Pro (early) 2008?
    Thx,
    Phil

    You can get a 5770 radeon ATI MAC card
    Avoid the 5770 cards on ebay and Amazon - many are black market or manipulated cards. 
    Buy it from Apple online store or B&H photo or Macconection
    And in my case, I was able to sell my old 2600 XT card on ebay for $65 and put that money toward a 5770 card (Which was about $230 minus the $65)
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  • What drive in Mac Pro early 2008 or 2009?

    I purchased a Western Digital Black 1Tb SATA hard drive and it did not work in any of my three Mac Pros (two are Early 2008, one is early 2009). It made a strange noise and was never seen by Disk Utility no matter what I did.
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    My question is: are these drives supposed to work in older Mac Pros from 2008 and 2009?
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    Thanks.
    Ellen

    Yes, I'm aware that SSD is the way to go. I have one (OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD), 480 GB, as my boot disk. It has the system and all my apps, plus my virtual machines for Windows. These are used very little, only to check if things we put on the web are OK in the various Win Browsers. But they need to be fast because otherwise, I'll go nuts.
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    And the reason we tried a Red was because we thought maybe we could use it later on a dedicated machine used only for music over the network. The drive is used just about continuously all day long. Bad idea obviously.

  • Mac Pro early 2008 2 x 2.8GHz Quad Core 10.7.5, replaced 4 x 500ghds with 4 x 3Tb and Raid card Raid5 them OK but can not load time machine back up as it does not see any of the 4 drives, neither does disc utilities, any thoughts?

    On my Mac Pro, early 2008 2 x 2.8GHz Quad Core 10.7.5, replaced 4 x 500ghds with 4 x 3Tb. The Raid card Raid 5ed them OK but can not load time machine back up as it does not see any of the 4 drives, neither does disc utilities, any thoughts?

    You don't see drives when using a hardware RAID only the volumes.
    WD Green are not suitable for hardware RAID (or software RAID for that matter).
    USB2 and TimeMachine are a disaster waiting to happen. I've used SATA (internal) and eSATA (using SATA PCIe cards) trouble-free.
    I can't say I begin to understand your use or "choosing the install drive for the backup"
    Install what?
    You don't load TimeMachine. Maybe seems minor but that is not how to describe the behavior of software.
    You read FAQ and How To http://www.apple.com/support/timemachine
    Time Machine’s Gory Details:
    https://www.apple.com/support/timemachine/
    TimeMachine 101
    https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
    Lion Recovry & TimeMachine
    http://www.apple.com/support/lion/installrecovery/
    http://www.apple.com/support/lion/
    How To Restore Your System
    http://pondini.org/TM/14.htmlMac OS X v10.7 Lion
    Pondini's Blog: Time Machine - Troubleshooting -- B5.  Would you like to inherit (or re-use) the backup . . . ?

  • External graphic card for mac pro (early 2008)

    I have a Mac Pro (early 2008) where the graphics card seems to be dead.
    I have no replacement and a new one is a little too expensive for what I'm gonna use it for. (400$).
    Also the harddrive died.
    So now I have an unconfigured Mac Pro with no display.
    I can't figure out if there is a way to boot it and have it somehow share its screen during a first install?
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    macvidcards on ebay can held on gpu, and disk drives are easy and shouldbe aregular yearly upgrade

  • ESata card for Mac Pro (Early 2008)

    I am looking for another two port eSata card for my Mac Pro (Early 2008) model. The card I ordered before Christmas from Amazon (UK) has just arrived but doesn't fit (Lacie eSATA PCI CARD)
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/LaCie-130823-eSATA-PCI-Card/dp/B001O9KEKM/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&qid=1294318895&sr=8-1
    It's only for two drives I use from time to time to back up my HD Video (personal family stuff only).
    Any recommendations?
    Many thanks, Matt

    I have the Sonnet E2P in my Mac Pro Early 2008. Also available in UK from here:
    http://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/productinfo.php?productsid=421
    And "Yes": that arrangement is the PCI-Express card connector - that's what you need.
    !http://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/images/381-img-main.jpg!
    It's definitely a Mac card - Sonnet product page here has latest drivers, etc.:
    http://www.sonnettech.com/product/temposatae2p.html
    (Currently = v 1.2.5)
    Edit: you could always use one of these:
    http://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/productinfo.php?productsid=511
    !http://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/images/466-img-main.jpg!
    It extends the unused motherboard SATA ports to the back panel. Cheaper, but requires you to partially disassemble your Mac Pro to install it, and the drives thus attached are NOT swappable while your Mac Pro is powered on - necessitating a power-cycling of your Mac to mount/unmount drives connected to this card.
    With the E2P you can mount/unmount drives without powering off your Mac. I'd go with the E2P!

  • Black Screen for Install of Windows 7 on Mac Pro Early 2008

    I have a mac pro early 2008 with lion 10.7.4 and boot camp 4.0.3 I think... anyways the problem I have is when I am in boot camp, and configure the HDD partition, then the machine reboots... when it reboots and starts up boot from the install DVD (legit retail copy) I just get a black screen on both monitors. No curser, nothing just a black screen, same as I get when the machine is off! the little white LED lights are on and nothing...
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    Hey Hatter, I know this is a little old but I've just picked up this thread and I wonder if you can help. I get the same issue as:
    JRASupport
    Jun 28, 2012 1:56 PM 
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    I get that dreaded black screen following partioning of my drive on the Windows 7 install on Mavericks on a Macbook Pro late-2008 (MBP5,1) but I'm at a loss to work out where the solution lies in the thread! ;-(
    To date I've spent about 5 days going back and forth trying all sorts of combinations, including the obvious:
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    - installing the imac drivers
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    Adam
    BTW I'm working off USB with 32 bit Windows 7 ISO

  • GeForce GTX 285 for Mac with Mavericks OK on Mac Pro early-2008?

    GeForce GTX 285 for Mac with Mavericks OK on Mac Pro early-2008?

    I am running a GTX 285 video card in an Early 2008 Mac Pro under Mavericks with no problems whatsoever.  I get all the usual start up screens and the Alt-Boot screen as well.
    Tom

  • Hardware for Mac Pro early 2008

    Hi there
    We have very old Macs at our university. We will renew them next year, however we need to hook up our magnificent video monitors to Premiere Pro CC. There is only DVI and FireWire signal out, no thunderbolt. Inputs on the monitor are HD SDI and HDMI.
    I´m sure there must be Hardware for this Mac Pro (2008) in order to connect to monitor digitally. I´m sure there were options when Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 was the current version back in 2008. Any ideas?
    Jon

    I have already connected two monitors via a DVI “hub”. So they are up and running fine.
    The hub don´t have any more outputs of any kind. Also I´m not sure if the quality would be good enough for the monitor output.
    Now I also realised that there is no HDMI input on the monitor, only HD SDI.
    Please look at photo here for info on my current graphics card.
    Best,
    Jon
    Fra: RoninEdits <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
    Svar til: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
    Dato: Thursday 19 February 2015 11:40
    Til: Jon Berntsen Huseby <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
    Emne:  Hardware for Mac Pro early 2008
    Hardware for Mac Pro early 2008
    created by RoninEdits<https://forums.adobe.com/people/RoninEdits> in Hardware Forum - View the full discussion<https://forums.adobe.com/message/7209429#7209429>

  • Best graphics card for Mac Pro Early 2008?

    I have a Mac Pro Early 2008 with the default graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 2600), and would like to make an upgrade to a better graphics card that will run games smoothly. I'm not an expert with computers at all, but all I know is I would like to buy a graphics card for around $200-$300 (If it's more expensive then that's ok, but preferrably this price range) that will get me the best performance possible. I play games like Minecraft, Skyrim, and Team Fortress 2. Thank you for any help/recommendations you can provide!
    Also, I wasn't sure which section to post this in, but feel free to move this thread.

    Also, to provide more information (not sure if needed), I have dual monitors and the following specs:
    Processor  2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
    Memory  16 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
    Graphics  ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256 MB
    My two displays are LG ULTRAWIDE Display (2560 x 1080) and LED Cinema Display (24-inch, Late 2008, 1920 x 1200)

  • Graphics card Mac Pro (Early 2008) What is supported

    I desperatly need a new Graphics Card for my Early 2008 Mac Pro.
    Bellow are the listed and supported graphics cards from apple site.
    None of the cards listed for early 2008 is possible (Very hard) to get here in Norway.
    I've read some treads here saying that ATI Radeon HD 5870 will work on Early 2008 Mac Pro.
    - Can someone please verify that this will work?
    - On the Note for early 2009 The radeon HD 5870 card requires Mac OS X v10.6.4 or later and it requires the use of both auxiliary power connections?
    Both auxiliary power connections. Do Early 2008 Mac Pro have this possibility?
    Graphics cards for Mac Pro (Early 2008)
    ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
    NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT (part number 630-9191 or 630-9897)
    NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600
    ATI Radeon HD 4870, offered as an upgrade kit
    Note: The Radeon HD 4870 card requires Mac OS X v10.5.7 or later for use with the Mac Pro (Early 2008).
    Graphics cards for Mac Pro (Early 2009)
    NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
    ATI Radeon HD 4870
    ATI Radeon HD 5870, offered as an upgrade kit
    Note: The radeon HD 5870 card requires Mac OS X v10.6.4 or later and it requires the use of both auxiliary power connections.

    Robban1978,
    I have 27 Apple Mac Pro's (between work/office, home, and clients), and have four Apple Mac Pro's (just at home) and I have purchased the Diamond Radeon HD 7970 graphics cards (7970PE53GHZ) for each of the 27 computers and the graphics cards do work great in all of my Apple Mac Pro computers (2008, 2010, and two 2012 Apple Mac Pro).
    The only problem is that I have to boot directly into Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8 to use the graphics cards because Diamond/Radeon/AMD have not released graphics drivers for the Radeon 7970 for OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion (as of yet?)
    See here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/20289120
    See here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/20289931
    See here:  https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4391012
    Hopefully AMD/Radeon/Diamond will release updated graphics drivers for OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion, and I believe the Diamond Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition graphics card is probably the best graphics card out on the market (based on it's price/performance), the only problem/issue is there are no OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion drivers for the Radeon HD 7970 series graphics cards yet.
    Hopefully AMD/Radeon/Diamond will work on developing and releasing OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion drivers.

  • Mac Pro (early 2008) cannot startup

    Today, I shut down my Mac Pro (early 2008) for about two hours and now it just refuses to startup.
    This is the symptom:
    Power-on LED illuminates when power button is pressed and fans spin continuously but there is no boot tone or video
    Apple Service Guide
    1. Reseat video card. (Make sure video card is fully inserted in connector and end of card is 1. secured by the connector latch.) For video cards that require power cables, check that they are connected.
    I have two GPUs. NVidia GeForce 8800 GT and NVidia GeForce GT120. Tried them individually. Cards' fans spinning.  Check diagnostic LED and LED 7 & 8 no light. Only LED 2 Yellow and LED 9 Green.
    2. Verify speaker cable is fully seated.
    No idea where this is.
    3. Reset logic board. Refer to “Resetting the Logic Board” in this chapter.
    Same symptom. LED 7 & 8 no light. Only LED 2 Yellow and LED 9 Green.
    4. Check diagnostic LED 3 and/or LED 4 for processor connection.
    Off.
    5. If only one of the CPU Error LEDs (LED 3 or 4) comes on, try swapping the processors. If the Error LED follows the processor to the other processor location, replace that processor.
    Since LED 3 & 4 are off, I guess CPUs are fine.
    6. Replace logic board
    This seems to be a standard fix suggestion for all startup failures in the service guide. Anyway, to check if it's a logic board issue?
    I tried this too:
    System Reset
    Mac Pro (Early 2008) has a system reset switch on the logic board that may be used to restart the system while it is powered up. This switch can be used to determine if a computer that won’t consistently boot from a cold start has power supply issues. Follow these steps to reset the system:
    1. With the computer powered up, press the SYS_RST switch located in the upper right-hand corner of the logic board. To press the switch, use the nylon probe tool (Apple part number 922-5065).
    2. If the computer boots after you press the SYS_RST switch, try shutting the computer off and restarting by pressing the front power button. If the computer restarts when you press the SYS_RST switch but not from a cold start, the power supply may need to be replaced.
    and I experienced 1. Can conclude not power supply issue? Did diagnostic check and still the same LED 7 & 8 no light. Only LED 2 Yellow and LED 9 Green.
    I checked both memory riser cards. No red light. Half a year ago, I experienced the same no chime startup issue and found that Apple's supplied DIMMs were the culprits. I tested individual DIMM and still no go.
    At loss now.
    Apart from sending in for repair, no budget for that, and other steps to revive my Mac Pro?

    had this exact problem yesterday. this is how i solved it although im no apple genius
    My Mac pro 3,1 simply woudlnt boot normally no matter how i tried to reset it. power light was fine, no ram errors, just no chime and no video.
    how i fixed it:
    1. shut down and unplug
    2. open side case (you should be using an antistatic wrist strap if you do this)
    3. unplug EVERYTHING. (remove all 4 HDDs, video cards, Ram boards, power cable, USB cable, audio1/8" jack, firewire cables. leterally you want it bare bones. only thing i left in was my superdrives)
    4. i removed the logic board battery and while unplugged held the power button for 1 min to drain all capacitors on the board. left it unplugged for 10-15min after this
    5. after 15 mins, the only things i put back were the logic board battery, ram boards, the audio jack to check for a boot chime, and the power cable. ( no video cards, no hard drives, not even the boot drive, no keyboard etc.)
    6. press power button to boot. HOPEFULLY you head a chime. if you do, hold power button to power off system.
    7. now only insert the boot drive and one video card into pci slot one (power plug should be out to install things)
    8. start the computer back up and look for video. hopefully it asks for a keybaord and mouse on the screen
    9. shut down without reinserting keybaord, mouse, or anything else.
    10. unplug system after power off, and reinstall and plug back in EVERYTHING
    11. reboot and hopefully all is well????
    -Mitch

  • MAC PRO (Early 2008) RAID CARD ISSUE - SYSTEM FREEZEHello (hopefully someone can shed some light on my issue)  I own as above a MAC PRO (Early 2008) this has a RAID card installed along with two 15k.7 cheetah hdd (320gb) and a spare drive, (which i m

    Hello (hopefully someone can shed some light on my issue)
    I own as above a MAC PRO (Early 2008) this has a RAID card installed along with two 15k.7 cheetah hdd (320gb) and a spare drive, (which i made a regular drive)
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    could not do a thing.
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    After performing this HARDWARE task and inserting all three HDD, and running the DISK utility from the drop down menu via the SNOW LEOPARD disc.
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    thanks for your help in advanced.

    hello people, the issue was in fact the GRAPHICS card nothing to do with the HDD or RAID system ( although this did cause issues with the RAID system it basically lost its way) below is my replay to another similar  problem some one else had!
    working in photoshop and then everything stopped working and the lot froze! only option was to force shutdown (via button).
    and try to restart, hoping all was fine, this was not the case :-(
    I had the added issue of the RAID card system, that i have, this was confused to say the lease and would not behave or work, causing the start up to hang.
    so i thought the HDD must be bust and the root cause. ( but soon learnt it was not the cause )
    ...bought a new HDD removed the RAID card and replugged the cable from RAID card into LOGIC board, ( making the computer act like any normal non-RAID system). I managed to install the OSX, using the snow leopard disk way. once the mac was running, i started to notice the screen would flicker and started to see 'artefacts'. so i started to reveal my symptoms to the web and forums and soon discovered that my graphics card could be the issue all along?.
    (nvidia geforce 8800gt 2x dvi).
    I read up on that a fix, could be either A. reply the thermal paste, as the card could be over heating or B. stick the card in the oven trick.
    Tried option A. first and nothing still issues, so last night took the plunge carried out option B. and ta da it worked! i even managed to run
    from my new HDD my lasted install OS X, absolutely fine. I then thought, maybe i could repair my RAID so replugged all the HARDWARD back in and
    carried out a disk repair and disk permissions on drives( took a small amount of time), via the SNOW LEOPARD disc - (Disk utilities) and this worked and now have my system working as it was just over 6 days ago.
    what was the cost to get this?  bought a new hdd so 40.00gbp and thermal paste and cleaner kit ( your still need to do this ) search video card trick on you tube.
    and renew thermal paste, approx 15.00gbp, technically i don't need the new HDD, but it was all part of the trial and error way i went. ( i do have extra storage as a result!)"

  • Mac Pro Early 2008 crash after gear on boot

    Hi. I have a Mac Pro (Early 2008), with Mavericks installed. A couple of days ago, it crashed hard (in Portal, as it happens) and then wouldn't boot. When it was crashing it showed full green in various (dark? or random?) areas of the screen, and then random vertical lines of coloured noise. The cursor went jerky, and then stopped moving at all. Having decided this was a more serious problem than a simple steam error, I forced the machine to shut down with the case button, and then turned it back on again, but it wouldn't come up, and hasn't (with exceptions, see below) since.
    The behaviour is:
    Boot chime, Apple, Apple-with-spinning-gear, a sensible (it seems) amount of spinning gear, then the gear stops and I get some flashing on my screen (like, a complete red screen, or orange screen – colours vary – displayed for less than one refresh, so I see a brief flash of colour with tearing). Occasionally instead of flashing I get an unexpected reboot: once when this happened I also got the kernel's (multiple language) "Your computer restarted because of a problem" screen.
    Safe Mode has the same problem (I get a progress bar, when the progress bar completes everything stops and "screen flashing" happens).
    EFI boot volume selector works fine, but when I continue to boot, either from my main partition or the Recovery partition, I get the same problem.
    Verbose mode works until the point where the graphical user interface should come back, which gives me a white screen and nothing (except screen flashing). I do get a certain amount of "kSMCBadArgumentError" before that point, but see below.
    Single User Mode works as it should, fsck finds no errors, all my data appears to be on my hard drive as expected, but on typing "exit" to continue boot I end up in the same position as Verbose Mode. Trying kextload to load all my extensions gives the kSMCBadArgumentError lines, but no other problems (until I try to boot). I have already tried using SUM to remove all the launch agents/daemons/extensions from /Library/ (leaving only the ones in /System/Library/). This worked (I modified the disk as I intended) but didn't help me boot.
    I did get the recovery partition to boot once (seemingly randomly), Disk Utility found no errors. The full Apple Hardware Test doesn't seem to be an option from the recovery partition? (I've moved house a few times in the last 6 years, and I don't know where my physical AHT disk is any more. I do have a friend who would probably be able to burn one if Apple provides the disk image as a download.) I have had a full successful boot once too (maybe on the restart after using the recovery partition?) which let me use my administrator user perfectly (I used it for about 5 minutes?), but then after logging out and while trying to log in as my "standard" user I got full green noise as before, and the machine locked up again.
    I've rotated my RAM (I have 2x1GB sticks and 2x2GB, as well as my usual 6GB config I've tried each of the pairs in "two-stick" configuration). No difference, except on one boot I got error lights (full on) on one riser, I assume that was because I hadn't seated it properly during rotation, because I took it out and put it back in again and I've not had the lights before or since.
    I've also tried swapping in an older system drive, but that made no difference. (The old drive may have been a little flaky itself, but single-user mode booting reliably suggests, at least to me, that my normal drives aren't the problem?)
    Without wishing to privilege a hypothesis, could it be the graphics card? I have the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT, I believe (it looks exactly like the pictures of that card online, anyway) – installed by Apple at build time. I tried taking it out and putting it back in again, in case it had become poorly seated, but it seemed firmly in place – for example, the PCIe retainer clip was fully engaged before I removed the card – and reseating it didn't make any difference. I don't have a second card to test with, unfortunately. I wouldn't mind getting a new card to keep the machine running, of course, but I'd like to make sure that it's going to solve my problem before buying it!
    Thanks for any help you can give!
    Edited to correct OS field, which didn't work. I really do mean Mavericks.

    RE: Mac Pro Replacement Graphics cards
    1) Apple brand cards,
    2) "sold in the Apple store" cards, and
    3) "Mac Edition" cards ...
    ... show all the screens, including Boot up screens, Safe Mode, Installer, Recovery, debug screens, and Alt/Option boot screens. At this writing, these choices include:
    1) Apple brand cards:
    • Apple-firmware 5770, about US$250** works near full speed in every model Mac Pro, Drivers in 10.6.5
    • Apple-firmware 5870, about US$450
    2) "sold in the Apple store" cards
    • NVIDIA Quadro 4000, about US$1200
    • NVIDIA Quadro 5000, about US$2500
    3) "Mac Edition" cards -- REQUIRE 10.8.3 or later:
    • SAPPHIRE HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 MAC Edition, about US$480** Vendor recommends Mac Pro 4,1
    • EVGA GTX 680 Mac Edition, about US$600
    The cards above require no more than the provided two 6-pin aux power connectors provided in the Mac Pro through 2012 model. Aux cables may not be provided for third-party cards, but are readily available.
    If you are Meet ALL of these:
    • running 10.8.3 or later AND
    • don't care about "no boot screens" etc AND
    • can re-wire or otherwise "work out" the power cabling, THEN:
    You can use many more cards, even most "PC-only cards"

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