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From: 6600joef@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Joe Foster)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix.sco,comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: XENIX drivers for ATI VGAWonder
Message-ID: <10739@hub.ucsb.edu>
Date: 22 Apr 91 02:14:39 GMT
References: <10541@hub.ucsb.edu> <10627@hub.ucsb.edu> <1991Apr17.221222.4424@midway.uchicago.edu>
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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 ;-)