From: kwan@netcom.com (Kwan-Seng Low) Subject: Re: Free software and the future of support for Diamond products Date: 13 Sep 1992 21:52:25 GMT
In article <1992Sep13.142036.26842@nuchat.sccsi.com> steve@nuchat.sccsi.com (Steve Nuchia) writes:
>In <1992Sep12.035549.4743@zeos.com> kgermann@zeos.com (Ken Germann) writes:
>>The solution for the support of X/Windows in the Freeware arena or
>>any other arena would be to design a VESA based driver for these
>
>The solution, for those of us who care about such things, is to
>not buy undocumented hardware. Vote with your wallet.
>-- ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Steve Nuchia South Coast Computing Services, Inc. (713) 661-3301
I'm not sure what you really mean here, undocumented hardware. Any documented
hardware would expose most of the vendor's proprietary design, at least the
majority of them. That was the first place Diamond refuse to give away their
proprientary scheme to set the clock.
If none of the vendor willing to reveal how to set clock on their s3
based card, maybe us the users might consider design our own.
Here's my dream card: User contributed, VESA compliance SVGA card.
Given enough hardware design tools (Orcad, spice,...), one would came up a
hardware design that only utilize standard component that's readily available
in any large electronics shop (e.g. Fry's in Bay Area). Complete schematics,
parts list, how to obtain it, complete doc. on how to build it, everything
available on public domain.
People has been selling hardware kit for some time, come to think about
it, it's something that can be done. In this case, we just have a very narrow
focus; we want to build a public domain hardware design that's specifically
optimized to run X on PC's unixes. People can take the initial design, perfect
it, perhaps adding new chips/parts when they're readily available on the market.
any response is welcome, just want to test this idea is making sense.
It would eliminate the dependence on vendors when it come to writing display
driver.
Kwan