Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Hardware mice pointers (Re: 386 machines are workstations? (Sun/386i)) Message-ID: Date: 16 Jun 90 00:16:35 GMT References: <2264@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <1990Jun15.213659.6206@bach.amd.com> Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 12 In article <1990Jun15.213659.6206@bach.amd.com> phil@pepsi.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: > 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. Given the outrageous inefficiency of VGA type devices (I've heard quotes of on the order of 17 wait states to VGA memory for a typical 386), I'd have to agree that they're pretty marginal. More to the point, the speed up expected by going to a hardware cursor would be even more significant on that platform. For an X implementation that used it, that could be quite a selling point. Just make sure that it's not a repeat of the BellTech BLIT card. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' +1 713 274 5180.