@Alkemyst
See it the other way:
BPlan had been cooperating with epic and Titan even before they
had finished the mATX-design (remember the dual-ZIF-version), and
at one point Titan may have said "we think there is a market for a real-
time video editor, and we want to write one". What was bPlan's
reaction ? Something like " cost next to nothing as it is allready in
the southbridge". Sure it would/could have happen as an PCI-addon,
but that would have taken more time, and MotionStudio would have
been more expensive for the costumer since they would have needed a FW-
card for it. Everyone who buys a board and than thinks about video, will
only need to buy the SW to get thinks going.
Porting MotionStudio to OS4 id impossible as as there is no working
FW-solution, and I don't see anybody starting on it.
For your examples:
CD-ROM were introduced by C= (CDTV)
GFX-cards were custom (expensive) Zorro-cards that needed SW. This SW
could later easily be reused for PCI-cards.
A ZIP-drive is just standard Unit handled by the device of a custom
SCSI (or IDE) controller. No extra SW needed.
Soundcards did start the same way as GFX-card, but in this case
someone later wrote a free and general SW (AHI) for them, but still
there would never be any support for if some companies didn't
sell the HW.
The only realistic way of adding FW to OS4 (other than in the OS
itself) is dongeling the card in the same way as the Spider is, and thats
something that simply sucks !
