Re: Re: "Drivers? We don't need no stinking..."

On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Kendall Bennett wrote:

> Vladimir Dergachev <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > You are wrong on two counts:
>
> Actually my opinion on this matter comes direct from conversations I had
> with ATI developers at the ATI mojo day. So although it is my opinion, it
> is based on stuff that I was told directly by ATI.
>

Let's hope that situation changed since then.

>
> >        2. ATI does provide documentation - which, in my opinion, has
> >           improved a lot. They have also switched their SDK to be
> >           Linux based (and not DOS/Watcom)
>
> They did all that back for the earlier chipsets. For the Radeon 9700
> family they are only releasing the XFree86 2D only driver and are not
> providing any Open Source 3D driver source code. I also do not believe
> they are providing any 3D specs outside of NDA either for the later
> chipsets.
>

You are right here - I reexamined the SDK and the 3d and VHA code is
indeed missing - the README says that these components will be released
separately. On the other hand the documentation file that accompanies SDK
does have the information about CP command packets - which is needed to
implement the 3D DRI driver.

                          best

                               Vladimir Dergachev