Follow-Up: SUMMARY: 3rd party graphic cards

From: Oscar Knight <odk_at_cs.appstate.edu>
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 14:21:02 -0400 (EDT)

A Follow-Up to my SUMMARY regarding 3rd party graphic cards.

Thanks to Dave Golden! He responded very quickly to my SUMMARY
and answered my compatibility question for DEC's Open3D and ATI
graphics cards.

The short answer. ATI graphics cards are NOT compatible w/ Open3D.
If it's not on the list of supported hardware then it's not compatible.

odk

-- 
Oscar D. Knight                      |  odk_at_cs.appstate.edu
=======================================================================
Here's Dave's response:
   From dave_at_invincible.com Fri Jun 20 13:35:14 1997
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   To: odk_at_cs.appstate.edu (Oscar Knight)
   Subject: Re: SUMMARY: 3rd party graphics cards  
   In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 20 Jun 97 13:15:28 EDT."
		<9706201715.AA09939_at_cs.cs.appstate.edu> 
   Date: Fri, 20 Jun 97 13:38:12 -0400
   From: "Dave Golden" <dave_at_invincible.com>
   X-Mts: smtp
   Status: OR
   Forget about the ATI card with open-3d.  You must use one of the
   cards listed in the Software product description for open3d, even
   the low end cards shipped by DEC don't all work on it.
   You should also beware of using "open market" ATI cards with digital
   Unix.  We did quite a bit of testing early on with one of our products
   and determined that we could use an off the shelf ATI card with 3.2C
   or higher.  Then we got a delivery of a set of boards that had a new
   RAMDAC that DEC had never seen (nor written software to support).
   Since the card didn't come from them, they couldn't help us.  Since
   then we've paid through the nose and bought the cards from them.  As
   much as we'd like to yell at DEC for the debacle, the real culprit is
   ATI since they sell many different cards under the same brand name
   and hide all the differences in their windows drivers.  As long as
   the discs that ship in the box work with the card in the box, they
   consider themselves off the hook too.  There's no rev you can look
   at on the card that will tell you that it has the "XYZ" chips etc.
   Good luck,
   Dave
   > It seems that an ATI board would be the best choice.  The the 4.0b
   > release notes even mentions some things you need to do to get an 
   > ATI board to work.  It also seems that long ago DEC even shipped 
   > some alpha systems with ATI boards installed.
   > 
   > However, all software MIGHT not support such a card.  We will be using
   > the Open3D product from DEC and it looks like the ATI board is not
   > in the supported list.  I've yet to investigate if Open3D will work
   > w/ ATI.  For now I think we will go with the installed DEC board.
   > 

Received on Mon Jun 23 1997 - 20:35:45 NZST