Hello Derek and group

> I'm curious as to why you put the cart before the horse, and didn't
> check for video driver support BEFORE you purchased the nVidia 6600GT
> card.  Such has been the way of OS/2 users since time began, after all.

  It is difficult to keep the big picture when we get little snatches
stretched out over time and often threads splinter or branch off so it is
understandable that Derek or anyone might lose the gist of what's going on
overall.  This started as a bit of a lark in that around 4-5 years ago I
decided to remove OS/2 from my main multi-booting machine and build a
dedicated, networked box just for it primarily for two reasons:
   1) LVM and associated partitioning conflicts
   2) Hardware drivers and especially Video card drivers or lack thereof
So the fun experiment was to see if OS/2 would run (and experience it
*blaze* if it did) on this MSI-AMD64 box which is becoming the evolved main
machine.  It began to get serious when I was pleasantly surprised at how
easily it installed, basically requiring only updated hard drive files ie
Danis506 et al. and considered that while a dedicated, networked box is a
good solution, it does tend to become neglected over time or at least
that's what has happened with me since it is not the main machine.  So to
answer this question I bought the 6600 GT because it was the very best 3D
video card I could buy at the price range (under $200) given a bias against
Ati, largely based also on drivers since nVidia has excellent drivers and
supports Linux exceptionally well while Ati does not and I do indeed allow
loyalty to strongly affect my buying decisions choosing to support those
companies that choose to support alternate systems including OS/2 and Linux
.  The signs were there when I bought the

 card and have grown even greater since that nVidia is becoming in the
video field somewhat analagous to what Creative Labs was a few years ago in
the audio field, poised to dominate.

> 
> Are you using 3D on your OS/2 machine?

  To answer the 2nd question I am not presently concerned with 3D
acceleration in OS/2 since I have long since stopped trying to game in OS/2
and I'm very pleased with 3D gaming in Linux. So really all I need is a
driver that will handle 2D acceleration with the 6600 GT, even though it
looks as if I should have held out just a little longer for the new and
completely amazing 7800 which is almost as fast as 2 6800's in SLI !! 
However since all I need is a decent 2D support I admit to being reticent
to spend roughly $40 for the SNAP driver which might possibly even work at
some diminished but acceptable capacity.

  Ever since I built the dedicated box which essentially stopped evolving
since there was no real need to upgrade hardware and shortly after building
it IBM began to close down free updated drivers.  Perhaps I am now facing
the ultimate dilemma, sidestepped briefly by the dedicated box, of facing
the choice to continue to try to keep OS/2 viable and thus conserve so many
years of invested time,effort, and learning (OS/2 v2.0 was my first GUI and
I bought Warp 3 before I finally caved in and bought Win95, etc) or to
finally let it slide and abandon it altogether.  I don't suppose IBM will
change it's ways even now that it has officially declared it dead and allow
the present state of hardware support to become basically open even though
I do believe the remaining OS/2 community certainly deserves it.

  So for now I will continue to try to find a free or at least quite cheap
alternative for a driver that will give me a basic, usable desktop or
reasonable resolution and enough speed so that one can't actually watch a
window unfold as it is written like some heavy blanket.  I won't buy ATi so
this is the only solution left to me if I am to succeed in maintaining OS/2
at any semblance of modern hardware since my dedcated box is a mere 300MHz
machine.

Still hopeful
Jimmy


> On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 07:07:40 +0000, rallee2{at}comcast.net wrote:






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