Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!andante!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!tektronix!sequent!mntgfx!gssc!bradd
From: bradd@gssc.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Flight Simulator 3.0
Summary: Compatability is relative
Message-ID: <5739@gssc.UUCP>
Date: 20 Jul 88 05:14:00 GMT
References: <2546@mipos3.intel.com> <16800323@clio>
Reply-To: bradd@gssc.UUCP (Brad Davis)
Organization: Graphic Software Systems, Beaverton Or
Lines: 42

In article <16800323@clio> berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu writes:
>
>In defense of the developer, your video board should have been tested
>for IBM compatibility!  You can't expect program developers to have
>one of every so-called "compatible" on the market.
>

   Compatibility is a relative term; only IBM can (legally) put an IBM
copyright in a rom, but a great many companies out there can make an EGA
board that is 99% compatible, and so much cheaper that there will be huge
numbers of them in the market.  (How many true-blue EGAs have you seen
lately?)

   Software companies must ask themselves how much that last 1% functionality
is worth in terms of unhappy customers and lost sales.  One company that
came down on the side of damn-the-compatibiles, full-speed-ahead is
Mindscape:  I bought a copy of Gauntlet, and was rather unhappy when it
didn't work on any of the four EGAs I could get my hands on.  I called them
about this and they confirmed that it didn't run on EGAs made by
Paradise, Quadram or on (at least some) of the IBM PS/2 motherboard VGAs.
(anybody know what the aggragate market share of these boards is?)

   The kicker was that it has auto-EGA-detect but no manual override, so
you simply can't use the game on a system with one of those adapters.
So I had to return the game, they lost the sale and a considerable amount
of customer good will.

   They promised they would send me a letter when they had fixed it, but they
haven't yet and it's too late now - Gauntlet for the Nintendo is almost out.

   Brad Davis

P.S.  I bet you could pick a test suite of a dozen or less EGA cards that
between them would cover at least %90 of the market.  Comments, anyone?

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