PCI questions

[Scott Quinn]

Probably pretty basic PCI questions, but it seems to be difficult to 
find detailed information about PCI online (for less than big $$).

I have a 98% useless 53C875-based SCSI card (Diamond Fireport 40), 
useless because the Diamond PCI ID is different from the Symbios PCI 
ID. I have several machines that support 53C875 chips natively (Alpha, 
Sun, perhaps HP 9k), so I'm trying to figure out how to turn this thing 
from a piece of junk that I trip over into an asset.

Looking at the card, there is a small Atmel EEPROM (not the firmware). 
(a) does anyone know if there's a way to bittwiddle without pulling the 
EEPROM? (2) since the machines I will be using it in have onboard 
firmware support, what would happen if I just pulled the chip (or is 
the setup of onboard peripherals integrated into the system firmware 
and the card initialization will fail without the EEPROM)?