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From: c37189h@saha.hut.fi (Harri "Haba" Suomalainen)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Can a 34010 emulate a 8514/A?
Message-ID: <1990Nov29.132641.11209@santra.uucp>
Date: 29 Nov 90 13:26:41 GMT
References: <1990Nov25.173919.4313@wubios.wustl.edu> <1990Nov26.203552.18302@santra.uucp> <6468@gssc.UUCP>
Sender: news@santra.uucp (Cnews - USENET news system)
Reply-To: c37189h@saha.hut.fi (Harri "Haba" Suomalainen)
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, FINLAND
Lines: 21

In article <6468@gssc.UUCP> geoffs@gssc.UUCP (Geoff Shapiro) writes:
>Well, if the truth be known, the 34010 cards DO NOT emulate an 8514/A at the
>hardware level. When people speak of 34010 cards emulating 8514/A they mean
>that there is a software emulation available for the 8514 AI which provides
>a compatible software i/f to the 34010 cards.

You are absolutely right on that.

>Any programs that talked directly to the hardware of the 8514/A would not be
>able to run on a 34010 card without a massive amount of dedicated circuitry on
>the card to emulate the 8514/A hw i/f. As far as I know there are NO 34010
>cards which do this.

As IBM did not release documentation to the hardware at the start, most 
programs (all i've run in to) do not use 8514 on the hardware level.
Even the original 8514 was used as the beginning (as fortunately still is)
used via the device driver software. As there are many software compatible
cards available by now, i think it would be extremely stupid to write a 
program using 8514 only on hw level.

-hs