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Matrox driver

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tho...@antispam.ham

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Jan 31, 2012, 5:15:05 PM1/31/12
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As I understand it, SciTech got out of the video driver business because
hadware vendors were no longer making information available about their
video cards, making it hard to write an OS/2 device driver for their
hardware.

However, Matrox has just released the driver source code for their
M series of video cards. I wonder if someone in the eCS development
community could port the Matrox driver to OS/2? Matrox could become
the preferred video card for OS/2-eCS users.

Dave Yeo

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Jan 31, 2012, 6:10:30 PM1/31/12
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tho...@antispam.ham wrote:
> As I understand it, SciTech got out of the video driver business because
> hadware vendors were no longer making information available about their
> video cards, making it hard to write an OS/2 device driver for their
> hardware.

I think a big part was that once IBM dropped OS/2 support they lost
their biggest customer and could no longer make a business case for
continuing development.

>
> However, Matrox has just released the driver source code for their
> M series of video cards. I wonder if someone in the eCS development
> community could port the Matrox driver to OS/2? Matrox could become
> the preferred video card for OS/2-eCS users.
>

How recent are these cards? Do they come in PCI-X versions?
Dave

Steve Wendt

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Feb 1, 2012, 1:07:17 AM2/1/12
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On 01/31/12 03:10 pm, Dave Yeo wrote:

>> As I understand it, SciTech got out of the video driver business because
>> hadware vendors were no longer making information available about their
>> video cards, making it hard to write an OS/2 device driver for their
>> hardware.

That was always a challenge, but not the reason. It was always rare to
have good information from the hardware vendors, even when they were the
ones paying for the support.

> I think a big part was that once IBM dropped OS/2 support they lost
> their biggest customer and could no longer make a business case for
> continuing development.

Yes.

tho...@antispam.ham

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Feb 3, 2012, 3:26:16 AM2/3/12
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Dave Yeo <dave....@gmail.com> writes:

>> However, Matrox has just released the driver source code for their
>> M series of video cards. I wonder if someone in the eCS development
>> community could port the Matrox driver to OS/2? Matrox could become
>> the preferred video card for OS/2-eCS users.

> How recent are these cards?

Don't know about the cards themselves, but news about releasing the
source code for the drivers was just this week. My impression is
that Matrox hasn't been trying to compete with the video hardware
folks who are after fast performance for gamers, but have instead
focused on the "video wall" market involving very large displays.

> Do they come in PCI-X versions?

Don't know. When I get a chance, I might visit their web site to
try and learn more. I've been using a multi-head environment now
for years and can't see myself going back. SNAP has some multi-head
support, but it seems unlikely that it will work with the newest
video hardware. Meanwhile, Panorama may work with more recent
hardware, but no multihead capability to my knowledge.

Steve Wendt

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Feb 3, 2012, 11:46:45 PM2/3/12
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On 01/31/12 02:15 pm, tho...@antispam.ham wrote:

> However, Matrox has just released the driver source code for their
> M series of video cards.

It sounds like it is available for licensing, not released:
http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/press/releases/2012/ip_licensing/m_series/source_code/
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