Oh yes? So what Mediator 3dfx drivers if not Warp 3D drivers you had on your mind writing: "The Mediator 3dfx drivers are almost certainly based on stolen intellectual property. [...], and I don't recall Nvidia starting a 3dfx licensing program." and "They were especially closelipped about Glide, their 3D API,[...]?"
I didn't have Warp3D in mind at all. My description of 3dfx's position on their APIs was anecdotal. Let's just consider this one lost in translation and let it go.
Sure, English is not my native language. But I think that these "misunderstandings" result mostly from the fact that you are not well versed in the issue about which you talk so easily.
You have a lot to learn about international communication. Granted, I only speak English, but I'm always aware that what I say and/or write may not be properly interpreted by a non-English speaking individual.
If they put support for all graphic cards for Mediator in one driver and called it Mediatorgraphic.card, would that mean support for one graphic card only? We talk here about the number of supported chipsets (like: VSA-100, Avenger, Banshee, S3 86C375, S3 86C325), not number of driver file names.
*sigh*
"Documentation" doesn't mean Linux sources, right? Documentation as a rule is a pretty thick book (electronic or paper) with descriptions of all registers, chipset operation, etc. Who thinks seriously about writing drivers, shouldn't he know what documentation is?
Actually, souce code does qualify as documentation. In this case, the documentation is written in C. How is that any different from documentation written in English, German, etc.? They're all languages used to communicate ideas. Shall I satisfy your need for troll fodder? Why not. No, I don't know of any publicly available documentation written in a language other than C that details the inner workings of Nvidia's various chipsets.
Elbox produces a PCI busboard, not graphic cards. They wrote such drivers which they wanted. You can equally well criticise the Zorro busboard producer for lack of support for better graphic chipsets than S3 Virge (installed in CyberVision 64 3D).
I agree, but programming information for Zorro busboards is publicly available.
So you have now those potential guilty of your failure in writing these drivers? Are your skills not taken into account here, Trev?
Huh? Maybe you should repeat that in your native language. Your first question is nonsensical.
If the Picasso96 folks say, "No, you can't write open source card and chip drivers for Picasso96," what am I supposed to do? In the US, fair use would allow me to reverse engineer their interfaces, but I'd much rather make some new friends and help support a useful piece of software.
Positive feelings about OpenPCI and Picasso96? Why? Because, unlike Elbox, they have done nothing new so far for users of Amiga PCI busboards?
You're drifting. We're talking about display adpater drivers, remember? And once again, you've misinterpreted my comments. I'm feeling positive about using OpenPCI because their dev kit is now publicly available, and I'm feeling positive about Picasso96 because the authors seem like nice guys interested in helping out the community.
Trev
