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Forget F/OSS drivers or specsForget F/OSS drivers or specsPosted Jul 26, 2006 2:16 UTC (Wed) by wrobbie (subscriber, #39320)In reply to: Forget F/OSS drivers or specs by jmorris42 Parent article: What AMD's ATI acquisition means for Linux (and Macs) (Linux-Watch)
"Almost every hardware component in a modern desktop PC has good Free drivers but no video vendor (excepting Intel) wants to release 3D specs. Seen lots of theories float, no idea which might be true."
Hmm, I keep hearing that these days.. So, where can I download the programmer's reference for say a 855 or 915 chipset? The Intel site only offers more global GMCH specs. Or are these available only under NDA to selected parties? For the old 815 a good set of free documents is available.
Cheers!
Rob
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Forget F/OSS drivers or specs Posted Jul 26, 2006 6:06 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Ya Intel is paying Tungsten Graphics to create open source drivers. Documentation is provided under NDA.
They do release specs for most other stuff though.
AMD is much better at it then Intel is. Intel is so-so. They do a good job providing good support for Linux on most stuff, but then they do stupid things like that binary daemon for controlling their new wifi card and making their firmware a download-from-intel-only affair.
I think that Intel wants to have good support for Linux and agree with Greg KH that binary drivers are illegal. Also binary only drivers are nearly impossible to support under Linux, by design.
Work for me, though. Intel isn't doing this out of the kindness of their heart, and I didn't buy a Asus motherboard with their chipset and cpu out of the kindness of mine.
Forget F/OSS drivers or specs Posted Jul 27, 2006 19:34 UTC (Thu) by shane (subscriber, #3335) [Link] Hmm, I keep hearing that these days.. So, where can I download the programmer's reference for say a 855 or 915 chipset?Did you even try Google? A search for "intel 915 programmer specifications" brought me immediately to this URL: http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/915g/documentation915g.htm There is a 426 page PDF that describes the registers, memory, operation modes, and so on in complete detail.
Forget F/OSS drivers or specs Posted Jul 28, 2006 1:06 UTC (Fri) by wrobbie (subscriber, #39320) [Link] "There is a 426 page PDF that describes the registers, memory, operation modes, and so on in complete detail."
That is not the programmer's reference manual, but a much less detailed datasheet. We were talking graphics drivers -- if you look at the relevant sections in that manual you'll see there is no information at all. The register descriptions you speak of are mostly PCI config space registers etc.
Compare that to the 815's programmer's reference manual.
Cheers,
Rob
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