From: hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr) Subject: Re: Free software and the future of support for Diamond products Date: 15 Sep 1992 14:33:43 GMT
In article <1992Sep12.035549.4743@zeos.com> kgermann@zeos.com (Ken Germann) writes:
>In article <1992Sep11.124831.10108@crd.ge.com> davidsen@crd.ge.com (bill davidsen) writes:
>>In article <1992Sep10.130359.24767@cbnewsj.cb.att.com>, dwex@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (david.e.wexelblat) writes:
>>
>>| Well, one of the responses to our Diamond mail survey was from Rick Kemp
>>| at SCO. I quote:
>>|
>>| We have no plans on supporting their cards at anything but
>>| 640x480 resolution. They have refused to tell us how their
>>| cards work, and we have told all of our distributors to
>>| discontinue carrying them (Gateway 2000 and Zeos).
>>|
>>| So we'll see. The fact that SCO is having trouble doesn't bode well
>>| for our winning this battle.
>>
>> Interesting, since SCO has a stealth X driver in their directory on
>>uunet. I have very little information about it beyond that.
>>--
>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
>software packages. It would greatly simplify the need to design
>specific drivers for specific cards. Granted the VESA drivers may not
>take advantage of the hardware specific to the card; but, there would
>still be a driver available until someone changes their minds.
>How difficult would it be to support a VESA based driver under Unix?
>This would be a place to start.
The problem is not in writing the driver but in setting the dot clock
values on the card. Diamond uses a custom clock synthetizer. What
this means is that other than the 640x480 you can't set the clock
values for higher resolution, unless you sign a non-disclosure
agreement with Diamond. As for being a VESA driver under
Unix we write directly to the vga registers we don't use the BIOS.
Amancio Hasty (386bsd/XFree86 hacker)
>
>--
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