From: librik@cory.Berkeley.EDU (David Librik) Subject: Re: Free software and the future of support for Diamond products Date: 25 Sep 1992 05:46:43 GMT
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.
I'd just like to thank the people in this thread for pointing out to me
what a mass of BS Diamond is trying to pull over on us. I was about to
buy a Diamond Speedstar 24, since I knew it was a fast and inexpensive
card. After reading that they refused to tell anyone how to program it,
I cancelled my order and bought an ATI VGA Window XL 24 -- and I couldn't
be happier. It's very fast, $30 cheaper than the Speedstar 24, does not
require that I replace my monitor (unlike the Speedstar!), and ATI is
delighted to send out all the information you need to get every last ounce
of performance out of the thing.
The people who say "but I'm not going to program the hardware for my graphics
card, what do I care?" are missing the point. A card that has readily-
available documentation is one that will be supported in all those "how to
program the SVGA books" that everyone uses to write SVGA software. And IT
WILL BE SUPPORTED BY SOFTWARE AUTHORS. Diamond's buttheaded move has just
doomed Speedstar 24 owners to go without the wide variety of shareware that
will be available for other cards.
- David Librik
librik@cory.Berkeley.edu