berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu (07/12/88)
In defense of the developer, your video board should have been tested
for IBM compatibility! You can't expect program developers to have
one of every so-called "compatible" on the market.
Mike Berger
Department of Statistics
Science, Technology, and Society
University of Illinois
berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu
{ihnp4 | convex | pur-ee}!uiucuxc!clio!bergerbradd@gssc.UUCP (07/20/88)
In article <16800323@clio> berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu writes: > >In defense of the developer, your video board should have been tested >for IBM compatibility! You can't expect program developers to have >one of every so-called "compatible" on the market. > Compatibility is a relative term; only IBM can (legally) put an IBM copyright in a rom, but a great many companies out there can make an EGA board that is 99% compatible, and so much cheaper that there will be huge numbers of them in the market. (How many true-blue EGAs have you seen lately?) Software companies must ask themselves how much that last 1% functionality is worth in terms of unhappy customers and lost sales. One company that came down on the side of damn-the-compatibiles, full-speed-ahead is Mindscape: I bought a copy of Gauntlet, and was rather unhappy when it didn't work on any of the four EGAs I could get my hands on. I called them about this and they confirmed that it didn't run on EGAs made by Paradise, Quadram or on (at least some) of the IBM PS/2 motherboard VGAs. (anybody know what the aggragate market share of these boards is?) The kicker was that it has auto-EGA-detect but no manual override, so you simply can't use the game on a system with one of those adapters. So I had to return the game, they lost the sale and a considerable amount of customer good will. They promised they would send me a letter when they had fixed it, but they haven't yet and it's too late now - Gauntlet for the Nintendo is almost out. Brad Davis P.S. I bet you could pick a test suite of a dozen or less EGA cards that between them would cover at least %90 of the market. Comments, anyone? ====== ====== ====== US MAIL: 9590 SW Gemini Dr. == == == Beaverton, OR 97005 == == == == == == PHONE: (503) 641-2200 == == == == UUCP: uunet!tektronix!sequent!gssc!bradd ====== ====== ====== Disclaimer: I'm a mushroom. Graphic Software Systems "Practice safe computing. Wear a write-protect tab."
malloy@nprdc.arpa (Sean Malloy) (07/25/88)
In article <5739@gssc.UUCP> bradd@gssc.UUCP (Brad Davis) writes: >In article <16800323@clio> berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu writes: >> >>In defense of the developer, your video board should have been tested >>for IBM compatibility! You can't expect program developers to have >>one of every so-called "compatible" on the market. >> > > Compatibility is a relative term; . . . > > . . . I bought a copy of Gauntlet, and was rather unhappy when it >didn't work on any of the four EGAs I could get my hands on. I called them >about this and they confirmed that it didn't run on EGAs made by >Paradise, Quadram or on (at least some) of the IBM PS/2 motherboard VGAs. Or on the Video-7 Vega, either -- I had the same problem; the program would get up to the 'pick your character' screen, then turn to garbage. I was the original poster describing my call to Microsoft about the FS3.0 color problem, and have been watching the followups with some amusement. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2.x has been one of the big "IBM compatibility" tests for graphics cards; apparently it was one of the nastier direct- write-to-screen-memory-and-display-card-registers programs available. Now, with the release of FS 3.0, it's becoming apparent that FS 3.0 is going to become to EGA compatibility what 2.x was to CGA compatibility. All of the arguments about whether or not it was Microsoft's 'responsibility' to test FS 3.0 with other EGA cards is a moot point. They didn't, and some EGA cards won't work in 640x350x16 mode. I would be willing to bet that every single one of the cards that won't work advertise full register-level compatibility. As I see it, the fault doesn't lie with Microsoft -- the program was written to use the IBM EGA standard -- but with the board manufacturers. If they advertise full compatibility with the IBM EGA, and software that runs on the IBM board won't run on their board, then they're falsely advertising their product. Sean Malloy Navy Personnel Research & Development Center San Diego, CA 92152-6800 malloy@nprdc.arpa