Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!rochester!ritcv!ccivax!rb From: rb@ccivax.UUCP (rex ballard) Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga Subject: Re: Electronic Arts Copy Protection Message-ID: <443@ccivax.UUCP> Date: Fri, 28-Feb-86 21:43:13 EST Article-I.D.: ccivax.443 Posted: Fri Feb 28 21:43:13 1986 Date-Received: Mon, 3-Mar-86 00:36:18 EST References: <1323@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> <695@well.UUCP> Reply-To: rb@ccivax.UUCP (What's in a name ?) Organization: CCI Telephony Systems Group, Rochester NY Lines: 64 Summary: Bad habits are hard to break, but must be broken sometime. I don't know what the situation was a year ago, but it seems hard to believe that your graphics routines are that much different from what is provided. If your graphics routines are that much faster and re-entrant, then make your own Intuition compatible driver and sell it as a separate product. Intuition, and friends have provided a nice, clean, easy to use VDI interface that let's you do practically anything currently popular (including Bit-Blts) and "prima-donna programmers" throw it in the trash!! This is like buying a hamburger and throwing away the meat!!! The old IBM-PC mentality of "Stomp on everything and take over" is not appropriate on a multi-tasking machine. Lotus wrote high speed drivers because there was no efficient default built into the machine. Many PC hackers jumped directly into the BASIC rom because they didn't understand vectoring. DRI, Microsoft, and IBM have all finally come out with their own (different) graphics vector "drivers", but too late for existing applications. Of course, EGA, PGA, and CAD graphics cards are unusable with these older programs. True, it takes a little studying to learn about VDI devices, but that's what software engineering is all about. It took time to learn about symbolic debuggers and full screen editors (if you started with 'ed' and "front panel switches"), but not using them make one less productive than someone who uses them. Even if an "industry standard VDI" is several years away, as it appears to be, the principles are not that much different, and many times the implementations aren't either. How many different ways can you draw a line? Even if there are 5, it's still just (, ). Would you write new code in 8085 assembler and run it through a translator to get 68K code!! :-) The early releases can be excused grounds of incomplete information, but new products should fall in line. To decide at this point that you are going to continue to stomp the operating system to gain 3-5 microseconds over a VDI call is not wise. Run a historgram on a logic analyser and scope the actual overhead of a "Vectored OS call"! It just isn't worth it! Note: I haven't scoped an Amiga so I don't know what it's overhead is, but in the worst OS I've ever seen, the "transition time" for "well behaved" vs. "Disruptive" programs has never been the "hot spot" of the histogram. Either a better, "well behaved driver" (if the hot spot was the driver), or a half-dozen lines of assembler in the application has easily solved the speed problem. If EA has a better device driver, sell it as the "EA Super Whiz-Bang Graphics driver" and give users the benefit of using it in All of their applications. I guess it's not too late to do your own different VDI if you want to, so long as it doesn't stomp on the applications that use the old one (Uses a different vector). It's been said that most applications writers are frustrated OS writers, I know it was true for me (Now I get the "whole box" OS, Drivers, Apps...), and it's really tempting to "play games" with the drivers, but all it does is prevent access to other markets, or raise the stakes to enter them. We all want to run the whole show, but sometimes its better to be a good actor and let the director be the director.