From: terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) Subject: Re: Free software and the future of support for Diamond products Date: 21 Sep 1992 04:31:26 GMT
In article <1992Sep20.191833.10080@zeos.com> kgermann@zeos.com (Ken Germann) writes:
>My overall point is that something needs to be done in the way of standards
>or getting hardware manufacturers to cooperate with software developers to
>support Unix Graphics Based Software. The developing of a standard for these
>video card manufacturers to comply with would allow a simplication for
>development of video drivers for X or other Unix graphics based applications.
>It would[n't] necessarily have to be VESA. It could be an Open Systems
>standard.
I agree with this; however, I'm a software geek, not a hardware geek. 8-}.
The problem with hardware standards is that there is nothing to distinguish
one vendors hardware from another other than price, quality, warranty, and
support. The lack of low-level standards prevents the hardware from going
commodity (like ISA 386's); this is in the hardware vendors interests, just
as the lack of a true ABI is in the interests of OS vendors (otherwise you'd
just buy the lowest cost one that did the job with a sufficient level of
support). There is also no room for "Trade Secrets" (like Diamonds clock
setting) which prevent other vendors from simply copying your hardware,
leaving you to amortize the cost of developement.
Terry Lambert
terry_lambert@gateway.novell.com
terry@icarus.weber.edu