6600joef@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Joe Foster) (04/15/91)
Hello, all. I've been looking for drivers for the ATI VGAWonder graphics card. I'm getting sick of being limited to VGA 640x480x16 and 320x200x256 and would like to use the enhanced 800x600 and 1024x768 modes of this card from within SCO XENIX 386GT version 2.3.3. My distributor hasn't been of much help with this, and I hope someone out there in Cyberspace can help me out. Thanks! Joe Foster 6600joef@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu joef@cs.ucsb.edu
6600joef@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Joe Foster) (04/18/91)
In article <10541@hub.ucsb.edu> 6600joef@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Joe Foster) writes: >Hello, all. I've been looking for drivers for the ATI VGAWonder graphics card. >I'm getting sick of being limited to VGA 640x480x16 and 320x200x256 and would >like to use the enhanced 800x600 and 1024x768 modes of this card from within >SCO XENIX 386GT version 2.3.3. My distributor hasn't been of much help with >this, and I hope someone out there in Cyberspace can help me out. Thanks! > Joe Foster > 6600joef@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu > joef@cs.ucsb.edu Well, after some long and expensive conversations with both ATI and SCO, no driver for the enhanced color and resolution modes exist. ATI says that they have provided the information necessary to write a driver to SCO, but they wouldn't give that information to me, and SCO wants $400 for technical support before they would let me ask for that information. I did cough up the $100 for access to SCO's technical support BBS. I hope the info's there. If I get the info and am able to write my own driver, I will post that fact here. It will take a while, since I have some computer-science classes to deal with as well. Joe Foster
6600joef@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Joe Foster) (04/18/91)
In article <10559@hub.ucsb.edu> 6600joef@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Joe Foster) writes: >Hello, all. I've been looking for drivers for the ATI VGAWonder graphics card. >I'm getting sick of being limited to VGA 640x480x16 and 320x200x256 and would >like to use the enhanced 800x600 and 1024x768 modes of this card from within >SCO XENIX 386GT version 2.3.3. My distributor hasn't been of much help with >this, and I hope someone out there in Cyberspace can help me out. Thanks! > Joe Foster > 6600joef@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu > joef@cs.ucsb.edu Well, after some long and expensive conversations with both ATI and SCO, no driver for the enhanced color and resolution modes exist. ATI says that they have provided the information necessary to write a driver to SCO, but they wouldn't give that information to me, and SCO wants $400 for technical support before they would let me ask for that information. I did cough up the $100 for access to SCO's technical support BBS. I hope the info's there. If I get the info and am able to write my own driver, I will post that fact here. It will take a while, since I have some computer-science classes to deal with as well. Joe Foster
goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) (04/18/91)
In article <10627@hub.ucsb.edu> 6600joef@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Joe Foster) writes: >Well, after some long and expensive conversations with both ATI and SCO, no >driver for the enhanced color and resolution modes exist. ATI says that they >have provided the information necessary to write a driver to SCO, but they >wouldn't give that information to me, and SCO wants $400 for technical support >before they would let me ask for that information. I did cough up the $100 for >access to SCO's technical support BBS. I hope the info's there. If I get the >info and am able to write my own driver, I will post that fact here. It will >take a while, since I have some computer-science classes to deal with as well. With this kind of obstinacy and short-sightedness, it's hardly any wonder that the quantity of publicly accessible software available for SCO Xenix is so limited. Maybe I'm just a starry-eyed academic, but if someone calls and says they want to do some free work for you that will make your system more accessible to users, you hand over some information. It's not as if we're talking about trade secrets. It's not as if letting ATI specs into the wrong hands will cut into SCO or ATI's business in any way. Stupid stupid. (Thanks to Joe Foster for so kindly communicating his efforts to the rest of us.) -Richard -- -Richard L. Goerwitz goer%sophist@uchicago.bitnet goer@sophist.uchicago.edu rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer
6600joef@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Joe Foster) (04/22/91)
In article <1991Apr17.221222.4424@midway.uchicago.edu> goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes: >With this kind of obstinacy and short-sightedness, it's hardly any wonder >that the quantity of publicly accessible software available for SCO Xenix >is so limited. Maybe I'm just a starry-eyed academic, but if someone calls >and says they want to do some free work for you that will make your system >more accessible to users, you hand over some information. It's not as if >we're talking about trade secrets. It's not as if letting ATI specs into >the wrong hands will cut into SCO or ATI's business in any way. >Stupid stupid. >(Thanks to Joe Foster for so kindly communicating his efforts to the rest >of us.) >-Richard >-- You are an incurable starry-eyed academic. Either that, or I have gotten used to being accused of being a clonemaker/pirate whenever I ask a company for the low-level info needed to write a working driver. Tech support people that aren't familiar with UNIX/XENIX just don't know that you can't use the BIOS in XENIX, and are dubious when I tell them this. Oh, I finally harassed ATI enough for them to agree to sell me the VGAWonder technical reference for another $40. I had to repeat "it's cheaper than a Silicon Graphics coprocessor" to myself about 10 times. All this to get a toy 3-D graphics package I wrote to make pretty pictures! I wish SCO included sample source code for a screen driver with their development system, since those are a lot different from either block or character devices, and there are a lot more kinds of requests that have to be handled, or are all those just for text modes? I wish DOS could do virtual memory (no, I *don't* want to port it to MS-Windows!) so I wouldn't have to go through all this! Joe "Blackbeard" Foster ;-)