Dieter wrote:
- OGD1 is for hardware hackers. This isn't just about graphics. If
all you wanted was a graphics card that worked with Free Software,
we've had that for a long time with Matrox, for some time with Intel,
and most recently and significantly with ATI.
And VIA has very recently (announced on Tuesday) seen the light, although
I don't think they have released any docs yet.
All this makes me wonder about the market for OGC. Will it have enough
unique features to sell, given the new competition?
- Some technical stuff: The TV chip still has not been tested. It's
probably just fine, but we don't know for sure.
$1500 for untested hardware. Hmmm....
I've been looking at the data sheet, and they talk about 800x600 and
1024x768. But s-video out is either x480 for NTSC or x576 for PAL/SECAM
(right?). Do they scale 800x600 and 1024x768 down to fit, or what?
One thing I've been trying to figure out is the maximum horizontal
resolution for s-video. The standard is 720x480 (or x576), but there
isn't any hard limit, and some analog TVs can go much higher. Can a
"normal" (e.g. ATI) graphics card output, say, 1600x480 to s-video?
If not, can OGD & OGC do it and make that a selling point?
So, to partially reiterate, here's what we need to produce:
- Articles and interviews
- Ads
- An electronic brochure
- Web pages with detailed information
- Publicity info about OGP, OHF, etc.
- A convincing argument that will make every FOSS enthusiast want to
buy an OGD1 board.
- Documentation
hardware
pinouts for the expansion connector(s) I assume the
missing one can be added by the user?
Voltages, min/max temp, humidity, and such
software
How does the end user program the thing? Provide a
simple "Hello, World!" type example.
The ideal "Hello, World!" would be a plain vga card with no pipelining
and stuff. You just get a framebuffer you can access like any other
memory.
Do the tools run on their preferred OS?
Things to avoid doing so it doesn't become a paperweight.
A clear warranty/return policy spelling out what happens
when the user does manage to make a paperweight.
- Diagnostics
- A starter list of things one can use the board for (may require
additional programming and/or hardware)
- graphics card
- FPGA projects (examples?)
- high speed D/A outputs
signal generator
sine, square, pulse, triangle, sawtooth, ...
ATSC
DVB-T
NTSC, PAL, SECAM
AM, FM
SSB, VSB
other?
- PCI bus sniffer
- what else?
- mailing list(s) and/or web forum(s) for users (seperate from the
development forums)
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