keyboard firmware

[striped pants]

how does this work?

my understanding of firmware is that it would be installed into some hardware (not the harddrive)

but it requires leopard, so if i installed it with my leopard partition, would it have effect in the tiger one? (which i primarily use)

[Photek]

I *think* when I installed it at work it said it was writing it to my firmware...

[trevor]

Firmware is programming (in other words, software) that is permanently or semi-permanently flashed into hardware. It can be flashed into any hardware that has programming, including hard drives, keyboards, and many many other things.

Quote: my understanding of firmware is that it would be installed into some hardware (not the harddrive)

Yes, it is installed into some hardware. A hard drive is very much an example of hardware. When hard drives have their firmware reflashed, the firmware is not written to the hard drive, like software is, it's written to the EEPROM or similar in the hard drive.

Quote: but it requires leopard, so if i installed it with my leopard partition, would it have effect in the tiger one? (which i primarily use)

If it requires a specific operating system, that's because the program that writes it requires that operating system. So, you have to be booted to the required operating system when you run the program to write the firmware.

When a hard drive has it's firmware reflashed, it's not specific to any partition on the hard drive. Partitions are part of the magnetic media, and are not touched by a firmware reflash.

Trevor