Timothy Normand Miller wrote: > http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=18902 > > I haven't read enough to know how far along they are, if they have a > working board, where they got their PCI controller from, etc.
"We've currently almost definately finished the schematic." The signature on the schematic, BTW, is Michael Meeuwisse. We know him from the recent discussion on documentation. :-) And "Project VGA" has been mentioned on this list before, IIRC. Ironically, for a project motivated largely by impatience with OGP, though, it appears OGP will beat them to market on an FPGA-based card. :-) Note that their concept is more of a simple framebuffer VGA card, not a 3D accelerated card. As some of the comments have noted, there is less motivation for this, since "any old VGA card" will work with free drivers just fine. But personally, I don't think that lessens the interest in creating an Open Hardware version of "any old VGA card". Plus, I think what they're trying to do is to create an *FPGA* card that is priced reasonably to use as a "consumer" video card. Which would mean it has to be a pretty cheap design. That's interesting in itself, because I just might be able to afford that, while much as I admire OGD1, I know it's out of my reach. Extending that thought to the marketplace it means that many people will be able to use an OH FPGA card to do HDL hacking who wouldn't be reached by OGD1 alone, which in turn means more people who know HDL, and that helps both projects. OTOH, it's not very much "competition", because people who can afford OGD1 and have much more ambitious goals, will certainly be interested in that much more capable board. The world's big enough for two so highly-differentiated open hardware development boards. So all in all, I think it's a lot more pluses than minuses. Technically, of course, they are not an "Open Hardware" project yet, because they are using CC-NC-SA-3.0" which is a non-free license. But they suggest that that will probably change. On the other hand, technically we haven't yet defined what "Open Hardware" means. I'm pretty sure CC's NC clause is right out, though. OTOH, it does make sense as a safety position before deciding on a license. ;-) Cheers, Terry -- Terry Hancock ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
