On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 01:19:01PM +0200, Shaul Karl wrote: > > What about freely publish the documentation for older chips? That > should help both the beginner developer to find his way around and the > chip manufacturer push the terms he is using and his general way of > doing things.
Oh, I'd love it if they did this. Unfortunately, the decision is left up to the bean counters. So far, it's been a difficult case to prove that publishing hardware documentation openly results in more profit for consumer peripheral vendors. > As for the claim that some people might give up on buying > new hardware, creating a secondary market for his old hardware should > compensate for it because it should give him a bigger share of the market > for new hardware too. How? As I understand it, that is one of the presiding reasons why *not* to publish documentation for your older stuff; doing so might cause someone to keep using an old piece of hardware rather than upgrading to your newest model. Of course, that theory could be turned on its head if you include the possibility of buying from a competitor instead. But what it comes down to is sale or no sale; I think the majority opinion goes something like this: let support for older hardware die => sale support older hardware => no sale. Ignoring of course the cases where the mfg supports an older hardware and thus wins a loyal customer, or where the cust was going to upgrade anyway, and the mfg's lack of support causes them to seek a competitor. But we have to show that these cases have a noticeable impact on their bottom line if we want them to listen. > I think that freely publish the documentation for the common features > and only hiding the more advance ones is also reasonable. I'd like nothing more than to have register level documentation of every piece of hardware I own. Unfortunately, the market is not making that a reality right now. Will it ever? > As an aside, some one wrote here some time ago that the best way to > get started is by learning from a book. What books are there that have > substantial part on the lower level of the interface to the hardware? I've never read a hardware programming book. The information in vendor databooks and driver source code are amazingly enlightening to a competent programmer; at least when they happen to be describing the same hardware. :) 3Dfx databooks Voodoo1-Voodoo3 are all available online and would be good reading material if you have never seen one before. There are some 3dlabs and mga databooks floating around on the net but I don't know if they are legal to obtain/link to. -- Ryan Underwood, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
