Buggy video drivers

created by linux8086

(thing) by linux8086 (7.9 y) (print) ? I like it! Mon Apr 24 2000 at 4:12:31

The number one cause of fatal crashes in X11, Windows 95, and Mac OS, where the screen either goes blank, freezes, or corrupts. Usually the only cure is a reboot, forcing the video card to reset itself. Often caused by poorly written SVGAlib applications.

(idea) by lj (4.3 mon) (print) ? I like it! Sat Jun 23 2001 at 9:40:12

No, I'd say you're screwed in any OS (remember that X servers can write directly to hardware) Direct hardware access seems to be pretty standard in every OS, as writing through the kernel is too slow... Consequently, a really badly written video driver can vomit all over the address space, and down the system goes. BOOM!

More annoying are video drivers that don't play nice. Quite a few video drivers (see ATi, Matrox) will happily attempt to bus-master to the card when its buffers are full, and let the PCI hardware sort it out. This gives a 1% performance boost to the graphics card, and hoses any PCI device trying to use the bus. Devices that send lots of little, time critical, packets (sound card, USB etc.) can't work when a graphics driver is doing this. USB joysticks go too slowly to be usable, sound breaks up whenever a window is moved. Graphics card manufacturers deny that this is their fault.

The ATi Mobility 9x drivers do this. The workaround? Install win2k. :(

printable version
chaos

X server	If I can't win I don't want to play	Sound Card	Matrox
USB	PCI	reboot	svgalib
Your beliefs are your concern, just please don't let them creep into our secular argument	ATI Radeon	ATI	Windows 2000 Professional
Boom	unices	Linux	Windows

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