Re: ati, hunting and Gateway Country, and other follies

["Robert G. Brown" <bob@xxxxxxx>]

>>>That was the first time I attempted to fix a buggy Winbloze that way,  and 
>>>given the success I have performed the same operation many times over.  How 
>>>many exactly I don't know but close to a couple of dozen. ....
>>More than a mere anecdote.Adam, you're saying that... 
>>1. NT (or WAS it '95) was not stable
>Either/or.
Not surprised. The closer I look at these GUIs and APIs, the more similar
they appear. Exceptfor thread management, related contention issues, and
a couple of other things (easily understood in the context of the two
systems), one can consider a high degree of commonality in the source, and 
it's possible that driver developers would tend to make the same kinds of 
mistakes.

>>2. Took out the Diamond card,
>>3. Replaces it with an ATI (and driver)
>Usually a Diamond,  they are the most popular these days.  Sometime some 
>other odd thing I've neever heard of.
Actually it doesn't matter. The baseline idea is that replacing the video
adapter and driver stabilizes the system.

>Did you know IBM made video cards?  It was news to me.
I knew this, but I also know that all mammals have 7 neck bones. Go figure.

>>4. Stability!
>Usually Improved.  Not 100% of the time,  but more than say 2/3...
Still good enough for me if most of the remaining 1/3 of the problems
are attributable to finicky memory/machine mactchups, as your writeup
suggests.

>....But that [memory/machine problems] wouldn't affect a problem where one OS 
>works and another doesn't on the same machine.
True enough. but then you're reinforcing the notion that a defective video
driver in one OS would destabilze that OS, while another OS with a "ggod"
video driver would be just fine.

I think the strategy for me to follow is to see if I can find the latest and 
great Diamond vedeo driver for NT to see if that stabilizes things. Mostly I'm 
doing this recignizing that it's easier to move software around than hardware.
If this doesn't improve the situation, it may be time to move NT to a more 
hospitable system (like one with a different card, among other things).

                                                              ---> RGB <---

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