> > The driver doesnt pretend to emulate any existing card, but
> appears (to
> > windows) to be a new graphics card. The device manager lists it as
> > 'VMware, Inc. SVGA'. Before you install this driver in the
> guest WinXX
> > OS, windows just uses plain ol' 640x480x16 VGA, which is
> indeed, yuck.
>
> This is certainly one possible approach (option 3 in my "Peripheral
> Considerations" post). I think it is a very good one for a lot of
> circumstances (just not the best for all circumstances). The
> drawback is you
> really need to be a windows driver developer to implement it.
> This has all
> sorts of (Microsoft) licensing issues and consequent
> restrictions on the
> source licensing. Fine for a proprietory product like VMware,
> but maybe not
> so good for an open source product... That's where emulating
> hardware with a
> well-documented interface scores big.
What licensing issues? Non factual comments don't tend to be
that useful with issues like this. I can imagine that there
are issues if you just copy one of Microsoft's sample drivers
but there don't seem to be any restrictions implicit in the
DDK documentation.
Emulating real hardware is fine but writing something like
3DFX or Matrox emulation is at least one order of magnitude
more difficult than writing a simple Windows driver that
uses the guest<->host interface. Anybody who actually starts
coding something like that would have my admiration!
Mike.
