Feasibility of a custom PERCH card?

ifrit05

New Tinkerer
Apr 19, 2024
12
9
3
Was just doing a deep clean of my Beige G3 and that got me to thinking: Since the PERCH slot is just a subset of PCI, what is the feasibility of someone creating a custom PERCH card? Something like a sound, USB, IDE/IDE2SATA/IDE2mSATA or M.2, 10/100 combo adapter (well, obviously not ALL of those, but some)? Could free up those few precious PCI slots we have.
 

croissantking

Tinkerer
Feb 7, 2023
92
43
18
Was just doing a deep clean of my Beige G3 and that got me to thinking: Since the PERCH slot is just a subset of PCI, what is the feasibility of someone creating a custom PERCH card? Something like a sound, USB, IDE/IDE2SATA/IDE2mSATA or M.2, 10/100 combo adapter (well, obviously not ALL of those, but some)? Could free up those few precious PCI slots we have.
It’s entirely possible but a big undertaking, not sure who out there would be interested in designing such a card.

In the meantime, if you have a Rev. 2 Personality card, you already have an unpopulated USB footprint that can be added on to :) It seems that Apple had planned to have this feature, but later abandoned it. The great thing is you can power on the Mac from a USB keyboard too. Check out my GitHub repository for more info:

 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: ifrit05