3 ms·

Modern Generic SVGA driver for Windows 3.1

50 points by rcarmo 2y ago

AshamedCaptain 2y ago
One of the problems here is that this uses quite a lot of the MS source code and I'm not sure of the license & legality of it. This was in an era where MS used to release part of the actual source code of Windows for OEMs to adapt, but as there was a special deal for each particular OEM, it is not very clear what the actual licensing & redistributing terms are if you didn't had such a deal. Most probably, this is violating MS copyrights, even if the source code is easily available on the web these days. I already had to drop a customer project like this a decade or so ago (just because of this uncertainty) so it's not entirely a moot issue.
- mouse_ 2y ago
  Life's simply too short to worry about Windows 3.1 extensibility licensing and terms of use.
  - AshamedCaptain 2y ago
    Think a video manufacturer who wants to release sources for their drivers but legal team says "no" because of this. "Life is too short to care" is the stupid argument that the lawyers will use to avoid spending any time digging on the issue. So they will just say "no it's too much a risk". As a consequence the source code for the drivers of Fancy-Historical-Hardware will never be released.
5- 2y ago
mentioned the other day (as the road not taken) in One Dog vs. the Windows 3.1 Graphics Stack https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42594024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42594024 (92 comments)
powerhugs 2y ago
Very amazing work indeed!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
leeter 2y ago
I'm curious about this exact sort of thing in regards to windows 98 and how hard it would be to support DirectX given that 3D support code is visible in Mesa3D for reference. But, then again... I'm one of the loonies that likes to see how far one can push an old operating system on new hardware.
molticrystal 2y ago
It is a shame that SciTech Display Doctor / UniVBE was never opene sourced. It probably contains a lot of wisdom and info to get all those special modes and probably would of been helpful for quirks and such that documentation lacks and only a concrete implementation would of found. On a side note, the PowerVR-Series1[0] released their source code for their GPU but stated that > As of right now, due to licensing concerns we have been unable to supply some libraries and headers provided by SciTech Software for "The Universal VESA VBE" I wonder if there has been efforts by this community, such if anybody has a connection to SciTech / Kendall Bennett / or finding out if IBM had source code releasing rights for that part of the operating system when they made it the native driver to OS/2. [0] https://github.com/powervr-graphics/PowerVR-Series1 https://github.com/powervr-graphics/PowerVR-Series1

50 points by rcarmo 2y ago

One of the problems here is that this uses quite a lot of the MS source code and I'm not sure of the license & legality of it. This was in an era where MS used to release part of the actual source code of Windows for OEMs to adapt, but as there was a special deal for each particular OEM, it is not very clear what the actual licensing & redistributing terms are if you didn't had such a deal. Most probably, this is violating MS copyrights, even if the source code is easily available on the web these days. I already had to drop a customer project like this a decade or so ago (just because of this uncertainty) so it's not entirely a moot issue.

mouse_ 2y ago
Life's simply too short to worry about Windows 3.1 extensibility licensing and terms of use.
- AshamedCaptain 2y ago
  Think a video manufacturer who wants to release sources for their drivers but legal team says "no" because of this. "Life is too short to care" is the stupid argument that the lawyers will use to avoid spending any time digging on the issue. So they will just say "no it's too much a risk". As a consequence the source code for the drivers of Fancy-Historical-Hardware will never be released.

5- 2y ago

mentioned the other day (as the road not taken) in One Dog vs. the Windows 3.1 Graphics Stack https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42594024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42594024 (92 comments)

powerhugs 2y ago

Very amazing work indeed!

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

leeter 2y ago

I'm curious about this exact sort of thing in regards to windows 98 and how hard it would be to support DirectX given that 3D support code is visible in Mesa3D for reference. But, then again... I'm one of the loonies that likes to see how far one can push an old operating system on new hardware.

molticrystal 2y ago

It is a shame that SciTech Display Doctor / UniVBE was never opene sourced. It probably contains a lot of wisdom and info to get all those special modes and probably would of been helpful for quirks and such that documentation lacks and only a concrete implementation would of found. On a side note, the PowerVR-Series1[0] released their source code for their GPU but stated that > As of right now, due to licensing concerns we have been unable to supply some libraries and headers provided by SciTech Software for "The Universal VESA VBE" I wonder if there has been efforts by this community, such if anybody has a connection to SciTech / Kendall Bennett / or finding out if IBM had source code releasing rights for that part of the operating system when they made it the native driver to OS/2. [0] https://github.com/powervr-graphics/PowerVR-Series1 https://github.com/powervr-graphics/PowerVR-Series1