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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!mcsun!chsun!hslrswi!aut!nbladt From: nbladt@autelca.ascom.ch (Norbert Bladt) Subject: Re: Announcing the availability of XFree86 1.1 Message-ID: <1992Oct5.072623.4762@autelca.ascom.ch> Organization: Ascom Autelca AG, Guemligen, Switzerland References: <1992Oct3.132808.11065@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 07:26:23 GMT Lines: 55 dwex@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (david.e.wexelblat) writes: > Announcing XFree86 1.1 > ------------------------ > (formerly X386 1.2E) > October 3, 1992 >What is XFree86? >------------------ [ text describing XFree86 deleted - NB. ] >What about accelerated boards? >------------------------------ > At this time, there is no support for accelerated boards like the >S3, ATI Ultra (8514/A), TIGA, etc. This support is available in commercial >products from SGCS and MetroLink. Does that mean, I can buy S3 support for 386BSD from SGCS or MetroLink for about x000,- US$ ? Nice, if so. :-) However, I think I can't buy it because 386BSD is not supported by them or I can't afford it. So, is somebody writing a S3 driver for 386BSD ? Anyway, thanks for the work the people did to port it to 386BSD (Amancio Hasty Jr. etc.) I think I will have to use my old ET-4000 board for the time being and hope that somebody is doing some work on S3 boards. Or is this work stopped because all the S3 boards are using a scheme to set the clock frequencies which is not documented ? Why not reverse engineering this scheme for different boards ? That should be possible and is not a violation of copyright. (I may be wrong on this because I am not a lawyer, but, at least, the proposed copyright law for the european community EC is exactly saying this, i.e. no software interfaces are copyrightable !). If the result of this reverse engineering is that every manufacturer is using a different scheme (which I doubt) then it would be better to not buy or use S3 boards, anyway. You see, I have both boards (not in the system at the same time, of course) and I really would like to use the S3 board for X instead of the ET-4000. I know, a lot of questions. Are there some answers to those ? Thanks, Norbert. -- Norbert Bladt, Ascom Autelca AG, Worbstr. 201, CH-3073 Guemligen, Switzerland Phone: +41 31 999 65 52 FAX: +41 31 999 65 44 Mail: nbladt@autelca.ascom.ch UUCP: ..!uunet!mcsun!chsun!hslrswi!aut!nbladt