CompuServe Messages

>> Who are they kidding… << Everybody and nobody depends on how you want to look at it… If *their* software is hardware independent it doesn't necessarily mean that the hardware is globally independent, anymore than 3DS's present image indendence is global… (except within 3ds) NT apparently allows you to hook up whatever external device you want, provided you design the interface, but that doesn't necessarily mean that NT will support it, in many cases like with framebuffers it won't. So D/Vision can claim hardware independence with thier software, but its another thing to say that the hardware is hardware independent via NT. I suspect that the D/Vision Online product will use the SVGA monitor which is tied into NT through a display driver (something NT does provide for), and the Ill Pro will operate as an external device much like the PAR, it will have independently accessible drivers and run through software independently… other software won't be able to access it directly or in a shared or common way… and the feature connector on the display card could be used in conjunction with the Ill Pro to provide a window of live video as seen on the Ill Pro… This means that 3DS could also have a driver for the Ill Pro, but again it would be independent of NT, and not accessible to other programs like paint etc. One remote possibility is that the clipboard could grab a rendered frame from 3DS on which you could paint in say QFX. This wouldn't allow framebuffer access to the Ill Pro but it would allow for a fairly direct link between 3DS and a paint program running in SVGA. This capability is available in Windows but I don't know how its implemented in NT. The clipboard does seem to be the key to making all this work, because with a frame "grab" board as I've described, being able to clip it to the clipboard, you could then paint, but there won't be any real time video scheme present in the system from which all sources can access it. So hardware seems to be the key and link to allowing a video based system to operate with NT. A fully integrated solution would be the best approach, which brings up back to Tom and the Alladin… he was on the Win 95 beta team… that tells me something right there. <G> Hi Tom! John