Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!amdcad!pepsi!phil From: phil@pepsi.amd.com (Phil Ngai) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Hardware mice pointers (Re: 386 machines are workstations? (Sun/386i)) Message-ID: <1990Jun15.213659.6206@bach.amd.com> Date: 15 Jun 90 21:36:59 GMT References: <2264@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> Sender: usenet@bach.amd.com (NNTP Posting) Organization: Advanced Micro Devices; Sunnyvale, CA Lines: 13 In article peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: |Or you can just write new X and Y values into the hardware mouse pointer |registers and forget about it. Why haven't hardware pointers caught on, then? |It can't be the hardware cost or complexity: the necessary hardware has been |part of cheap 8-bit computers for the past 10 years. I believe that in the IBM-PC VGA world, it is very expensive to do in hardware. Some people have done it but I have heard quotes of around 10 to 15% more silicon, which is outrageous given the low margins in VGA devices. -- Phil Ngai, phil@amd.com {uunet,decwrl,ucbvax}!amdcad!phil