From: das9674@ucs.usl.edu (Stephenson Daniel A)
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM PC CLONE?
Organization: Univ. of SW Louisiana, Lafayette
	<1993Jan10.220842.23518@ra.msstate.edu>
	<C0o5oF.Iv3@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu>
	<1993Jan11.113721.14501@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au>
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 21:01:13 GMT

In article <1993Jan11.113721.14501@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au> davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au (David Meiklejohn) writes:

   In article <C0o5oF.Iv3@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> papresco@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes:
   >>That's just it, there is no SVGA standard.  There are so many different
   >>chips that supporting all of them can be difficult.  VESA attempts to 
   >>provide a standard, but it is usually very slow and isn't guaranteed to
   >>work on all systems.  
   >
   >Who needs a standard?  That's what drivers are for.  As long as they
   >all write to the driver standard, the actual hardware can be as bizarre
   >(and powerful) as the electrical engineers can make it.

   As long as you're running all Windows software, you're laughing.  All these
   "SVGA" cards have drivers for OS/2, I suppose?

You must realize that the majority of PC software being released *is* Windows
software.

Also, while not as ubiquitous as Windows drivers (what COULD be?!) OS/2
does have drivers written for video cards.  You can get 1024X768X256colors
if you want, but not with all video card chipsets.

   >>bandwidth                   ~7M/sec                  ~3M/sec
   >
   >Vesa spec bandwith is much higher then EITHER of these.  Byte says
   >150Mps sec...that's 19M/sec.  They also say: "Few of today's
   >applications require more then 100Mbs"...Vesa spec local bus has
   >bandwith to spare.

Also, I think EISA rates at 39Mbs, and MCA (still more numerous than EISA)
at 40Mbs.

   >>line-drawing                custom chip              CPU driven
   >
   >Or coprocessed.  Same deal...it depends on the board you buy.  And this
   >one was $250.00.

   Let's get this straight.  "SVGA" is *NOT* anything and everything.  It must
   bear some passing relationship to VGA, which is strictly a dumb card.  If you
   have hardware bit blitting and line drawing, you're talking TIGA or S3, etc.
   Not SVGA.

Eh?  Eh?  The accelerated cardsalmost always come with VGA passthrough should
you need them, but for the purpose for which they are designed, then run
at SVGA resolutions and colors, FAST.  What do you mean by lumping them in
with frambuffer VGA cards and saying they are NOT SVGA??

   Of course, that's just semantics.  The real problem is that the software

Aha.

   needs to know how to drive these coprocessed cards.  That means either being
   Windows software, or a well-supported special case like AutoCAD, or you're
   out of luck.

Then it is a good thing that most of the softwarecoming out IS for Windows
or OS/2.  And the only other case I can think of for running at SVGA
resolutions and color (apart from things like AutoCAD, etc.) are games,
and well, that isn't so bad since most of them would crawl anyway.

   >And because
   >>the Clones are such pieces of hacked together junk, you'll need that 
   >>support line to get the damn thing running.  "Oh, just set this jumper to
   >>R7 and then reboot, go into CMOS setup, select DF32 OFF, save it to CMOS
   >>RAM and exit.  Edit the autoexec.bat file to include the line C:\DOS\KLUDGE
   >>and the config.sys file to say KLUDGE=3.  Now, reboot again and then run
   >>the MSD program to be sure that there are no memory conflicts.  When done,
   >>go into Windows and edit the Kludge .pif file with ..."
   >
   >I've never had any of these problems...but then I dont' use windows.

   It has nothing to do with Windows.  Try installing a simple little tape
   controller card in a PC which already has a SCSI interface, a network card,
   and a Targa board, then get back to me.  Until you've tried supporting dozens
   of PCs in a range of hardware configurations, you really have no idea just how
   cretinous they can be.

Sure, you can stuff a single machine, and you're likely to find weird conflicts,
but this isn't a problem for 99.9% of PC people, who at most (like me)
only put in a sound card and memory.

   >>That's what I call total bullshit, yet Clone owners will often come across
   >>things like that when installing new hardware or software.  It is truly a
   >>pity that the world got suckered in by IBM and Microsoft's deceptions.
   >
   >The world didn't get sucked in.  The world was smart...we said we
   >wanted an open standard, an industry wide standard, and we wanted
   >software compatibility across busses, video cards, sound cards,
   >motherboards and even processors.  We wanted freedome from vendor
   >dominance.
   >
   >If we all bought Amiga's we'd be at Commodore's mercy, and everything,
   >from full systems, down to the smallest peripheral would be an order of
   >magnitude more expensive.

I agree.

   But, what if some had Amigas, and some Macs, and some Unix boxes, and some
   even had PCs.  We don't all need to own Amigas.  But, I object to the
   stifling sameness of a PC-only world.  Alas, that seems to be the way we're
   heading.  Maybe RISC workstations will save us yet.  I hope so.

I do not see how the sameness is BAD!  All it does is give me  measure
of uniformity, and inexpensive  everything.  If there is a need for
really unusual computers, the marketplace will keep it.  But in the large
case people usually have the attitude of 'What for?' when told they should
by an Amiga, Mac, etc.  The mainstream is the way.


   David Meiklejohn (davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au)
    - PC's, Unix, and networks by day, Amigas by night...

Heh heh.

David, what kind of work with video do you do with your Amiga?
--
Dan Stephenson   das9674@usl.edu
"I'd rather have a kiss of my yellow gypsy's lips"
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy