*BSD News Article 6659


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!rpi!psinntp!psinntp!l5next!scotty
From: scotty@gagetalker.com (Scott Turner)
Subject: Re: Question on Diamond Clock Synthesizer
Message-ID: <1992Oct15.010334.13614@gagetalker.com>
Sender: scotty@gagetalker.com
Organization: L5 Computing
References: <1992Oct13.175214.19534@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 01:03:34 GMT
Lines: 29

In article <1992Oct13.175214.19534@fcom.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (A  
Wizard of Earth C) writes:
|> In article <1992Oct13.050754.4113@sinkhole.unf.edu> shite@sinkhole.unf.edu  
(Stephen Hite) writes:
|> >
|> >   I read a message that David Wexelblat posted recommending
|> >for people to not use the "Batman" Diamond clock code (David got this 
|> >advice from Thomas Roell).  I believe the reason was that it could
|> >cause some kind of physical damage to either your monitor or card
|> >(forgot which).  I'll take Thomas's word for it...
|> 
|> Wrong reason.  The reason was legal.  There would be no more danger in a
|> piece of code dealing with the video card than any other code dealing with
|> a video card.  The warnings you remember were from another post for some
|> alpha VGA code (not the "Batman" code).  Unfortunately, no one who has
|> used the "Batman" code can sy whether or not there was a problem, since
|> doing so could be admitting a violation of the trade secrets act if Diamond
|> wanted to prosecute.
Forget these Diamond turkey's. The STB Evolution card uses the Cirrus Logic
CL-GD5422 chip which has onboard clock generation and is FULLY documented
with no trade secret restrictions by Cirrus Logic.

As for reverse engineering the Diamond I thought they had one of those
annoying "by using this product you agree to the following..." thingies
that basically says you won't reverse engineer the card because it has
trade secrets inside it and that I agree to protect it from all un-american
influences like Clinton and Gore. :)

Scotty