From: brian%jensen.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Subject: Re: superVGA  (and misc top-blowing)
Date: 12 Aug 92 12:54:00 MDT
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept


From: Brian Sturgill <brian@cs.utah.edu>
--------

  > From:  dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap)
  > In-reply-to: Your message of "12 Aug 92 16:04:26 MST."
  >          <1992Aug12.160426.27444@njitgw.njit.edu> 

  > In article <1992Aug10.181100.20667@news.columbia.edu> azf@cunixa.cc.columbi
    >>> a.edu (Abu Zakaria Faridatul Azlin) writes:
  ...
  > >In windows I am used to be using the 800x600 resoultion and really liked i
    >>> t.
  > >Does OS/2 supports this  resolution? and if YES HOWWWWWW?
  > 
  > OS/2 supports any resolution you have a driver for.  Since there is no
  > standard for super-VGA, you must get the driver from your board
  > manufacturer.  There are many drivers available on-line from
Why then, does IBM not provide seemless windows support for 8514... is
it not a standard?  Perhaps I should contact the manufacturer? :-)

  > ftp-os2.nmsu.edu, if you have FTP access - note that you can use OS/2
  > 1.3 display drivers as well, and you may have to for now.
3 (2 at least of which are in beta) counts as "many" available?
I have an orchid pro ii and can't use the driver as it does work > 60hz.
The other Tseng-based card I have at home doesn't have a driver either.
Where's the one for Diamond speedstar?
Why does the ATI Ultra (which can do 1280x1024) driver stop
at 800x600?
It's a sad day when you have to consider buying new hardware to match
your operating system, when the hardware you have is already reasonably
modern (< 2 years old).

  > 
  > Note that only the Trident boards have seamless Windows drivers at the
  > higher resolutions.
If it don't have seemless windows support, then it just doesn't cut it.
The lack of this feature is one of the major reasons my wife just switched
from OS/2 2.0 to Windows 3.1 (that and speed difference, and one of her
important apps needs 3.1 to do OLE (don't know why, but the feature didn't
work under OS/2)).

In another thread people keep bragging about the fact they don't use Windows
apps... to me this in inconceivable... why restrict yourself to
Describe, Object Vision and free/shareware.  I find it hard to believe
that anyone can't find at least one Microsoft app they really like
(I very much like Word and Visual Basic).

Back to the point here... I am (hmm... I probably should start saying
was) a big fan of OS/2, but IBM has let its whole user community down
by not having issues such as super VGA solved by now.  OS/2 2.0 has
been out for over 4 months now, and the best IBM seems to be offering
is that 2 months from now, we'll finally be getting the fixes that
ought have been there from the start.  I can only hope for OS/2's sake
that plentiful superVGA driver support is there by then... Windows
NT's pre-beta comes with as good a selection than that CURRENTLY available
for OS/2 2.0.

Oh, another thing that kills me is people knocking Windows 3.X
for "shipping" 12-17 million, with only maybe 4-8 million in actual
use.  How many of the (finally confirmed numbers from IBM!) 1,000,000
that's been shipped of OS/2 2.0, are actually in use?
At home and at work I have a total of 4 copies of OS/2 2.0.
Only 2 of these copies are in use.  My guess is that this is far from
untypical.  Further as things stand... if NT is half as good as promised
NONE of these may be in use when NT's first beta ships.
Of the 40 or so copies of OS/2 2.0 I have personal knowledge of, probably
only 34 are in use, and after NT ship, probably less than 20 will be in
use.  My guess is that OS/2 2.0 will at the time NT ships (lets say
February 93) have only about 1,000,000 users.  If that first release is as
good as it seems likely to be, that 1,000,000 could become 600,000 in just
a couple of months.  This is not a sufficiently large enough group
to attract a good crowd of ISVs of horizontal apps.
OS/2 2.0 users, should get used to paying higher prices for lesser apps.

Oh... one other thing... Borland has now said that the compiler for
OS/2 will not be available till year's end.  It's about to enter
beta.  Borland said at the NT developers conference that they will
have the NT version out within 2 months of NT's release.

Brian