Quick Trivia Question

[SMurf]

Hello,

Does anyone know which Thinkpad was the first to feature OpenGL hardware acceleration? Reading through posts, I've deduced that it was after the 600 series, not the 770 series... but maybe a year or so later?

This Thinkpad 701c that came from eBay just last week is my first laptop and Thinkpad. I'm scouting for for further acquisitions!

[joester]

Welcome aboard, and good luck competing with some of the senior members...
Not that it's impossible to out do them, but some have incredible collections.

Joe

[pianowizard]

A search through the Twbook showed that the 770 is the only numbered Thinkpad (i.e. before the A,I,T,X classification started) with OpenGL. The 770 was introduced in October 1997, about half a year before the 600.

I'm scouting for for further acquisitions!

What are you getting next? I highly recommend the Thinkpad 240. I have owned four of them because they're so cute!

[SMurf]

Hmm, not sure about the 770, they're NeoMagics apparently and searching the forum revealed that they can't do hardware OpenGL acceleration. It's tricky to fish out becuase lots of peeps talk about how they can still use D3D apps but software emulation is a beautiful thing.

As for my next target... I hold the belief that a laptop should be small, top view dimensions not bigger than a sheet of A4 paper and thickness on par with some of the leaner programming books I have. Modern laptops are great and all, but they seem to be gravitating towards all being replacement desktops with the power consumption to match.

The 240 does seem nice, but the 570 has its charms too. I like the historic value of a mobile P2.

[Stargate199]

All of the NeoMagic video cards do not support hardware OpenGL. They are really bads video cards. I much prefer the video card in my T21 over any of those.

[AlphaKilo470]

Hmm, not sure about the 770, they're NeoMagics apparently

The 770s have Trident chips.

[SMurf]

Oh yeah, was trying to pull that one out of memory and I failed.

The Trident range that was used sounds decent for mobile graphics of the time, but does it do OpenGL?

[Eric Giles]

Oh yeah, was trying to pull that one out of memory and I failed.

The Trident range that was used sounds decent for mobile graphics of the time, but does it do OpenGL?

When I bought the first 770ED that was released, one of the marketing lines was the '3D Acceleration' of the Trident video chipset. As far as OpenGL goes, my memory is a bit hazy on that-but the 3D Acceleration part was basically a joke. It was a heck of a solid machine, but in the Thinkpad tradition, it was a bit weak on the video end of things.

[AlphaKilo470]

Yeah, it really wasn't until around 2000 or so when the A series came out that the ThinkPad line finally got some decent video chipsets.