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Freeing the Specs?
rhost89 asks: "I'm a hobbyist OS Developer and am appalled at the obscurity and availability of some of the specs sheets for various device groups, specifically video cards. If we want to write video drivers we are almost forced into writing for VESA or for cards that were obsolete 5 years ago, meaning high resolutions that run like a dog, or blazingly fast at 640x480 at 256 colors. Most manufactures hold on to their engineering spec sheets like pirate holds on to their gold doubloons (NVIDIA, and ATI come to mind, here). Other manufactures are quite happy to provide the specs for their devices, such as Intel and Matrox. My question is what can hobbyist OS developers do to get these coveted spec sheets. Would petitions help or would it be an exercise in futility. What else can we do to free this valuable information besides reverse engineering the manufactures binaries?" It's funny how the more things have changed over the last five years, the more things stay the same.
Make sure that your purchases reflect your values - if you value open specifications then purchase products that do so.
It's for this reason that, although otherwise manufacturers of good product, that NVidia doesen't get any of my business, or any of business that I can influence.
(Nvidia produces accaptable Linux drivers, but due to their closed nature, getting acceptable performance in *BSD is next to impossible)
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
You have a couple of options.
1. You can use a video board that is easy to support or...
2. Design your video system so that it can use x windows drivers. You would get a lot of access to video drivers quickly.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.