Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Modern Video Cards with Open Specs?

Posted by Cliff on from the an-extinct-hardware-species? dept.

JessLeah asks: "I've been having trouble finding decent, 3D-accelerated drivers for video cards (of late-90s/early-2000s vintage) under Linux. I'd just get a newer card, but it seems like the situation for newer cards is even worse. The market at present seems to be little more than an nVidia/ATI duopoly, and neither nVidia nor ATI have open specifications available for their chipsets. As a result, both of them presently have binary-only, x86-only, Linux-only XFree86 drivers as their sole alternative to Windows. Are there any modern chipsets (with a reasonable cost) that actually have open specifications available online -- or, at a minimum, open-source drivers that can actually compile on things other than Linux/x86" What was the last video card with open specifications that you can remember?

2 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I don't get it. by schapman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think it has more to do with the IP involved in video card drivers. The hardware on newer vid cards is so similar that a lot of performance and image quality comes from the driver. If ATI and NVIDIA open sourced their drivers, it would make it very difficult for them to compete with each other. It would just come down to brand loyalty or pre-bundled stuff w/ pre-built pcs. One of the reasons ATI is competitive at this point with NVIDIA is that they have a higher image quality in their renderings than NVIDIA. The video card market is not just about hardware at this point, bad drivers will result in crappy sales as much as bad hardware. Look at the ATI of the past... before the 9700pro came out ATI was notorious for crappy drivers. They fixed them, brought out good hardware.. and have steadily gained on NVIDIA ever since. [/ramblin] Now that I'm done w/ that, I'm all in favour of open source software.. but for some things I'll gladly support binary only.

    --
    Wouldnt you like to be a pepper too?
  2. Re:They may not open the code by ZorinLynx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember back when you'd buy hardware, it would come with DETAILED technical specs, even schematics, describing how it works, how to program it, and what each part was. These days it's like "NO YOU CAN'T HAVE THE SPECS YOU MIGHT VIOLATE OUR COPYRIGHT/PATENT/INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CRAP".. Why did companies GET like this? I mean, if anything it was easier to copy the technology BACK THEN!

    I still have the manual for my Epson LX-800 printer. In the back is a detailed programming guide, which explains exactly how to print different densities, how to control the firing of the pins, etc... All open, all available.

    I still have the reference manual for my Apple II plus. Inside is a complete schematic of the system, along with assembler code for the entire ROM.

    I really hate this new trend of "everything's a secret". Gahh, what a greedy, messed up world we live in.

    -Z