Date: Fri, 06 Nov 1998 17:54:55 -0500 From: "Steve Friedrich" <SteveFriedrich@Hot-Shot.com> To: "Rick Hamell" <hamellr@dsinw.com> Cc: "FreeBSD User Questions List" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>, "Joe \"Marcus\" Clarke" <marcus@jaguar.ir.miami.edu> Subject: Re: Compaq 590XL and X Message-ID: <199811071612.LAA25206@laker.net>
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On Fri, 6 Nov 1998 14:34:34 -0800 (), Rick Hamell wrote: >> It's probably vague so they can "slipstream" a different video board >> anytime they can get a better deal. If you have DOS, you can go into >> debug and go to the video BIOS address space and it will have a >> manufacturer's ID string telling what kind of video it is. If you have >> Winblows, you can use MSD. >> >> Someone else may have other alternatives... HTH > > > Mine would be to pop the case off and read the chips. It'll say >pretty clearly what brand and chipset it is. *grin* But that's just me.... It's a start... but it's not conclusive. For example, some motherboard manufacturers will build video into the motherboard using ATI, S3, or whatever chips, but the implementation will differ from any daughter card on the market, sometimes (frequently?) enough to cause video drivers to be incompatible. So my advice was simply based on "the proof is in the pudding". Manufacturers "slipstream" hardware, software, and firmware changes in, usually without notice. And the manufacturer's ID string will, at least sometimes, indicate who the implementation is by. You may have an ET4000/W32p chip, but was the rest of the video circuitry designed by Diamond, Hercules, or someone else. Knowing the chip is good, but not nearly enough. Unix systems measure "uptime" in years, Winblows measures it in minutes. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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