I've seen some references to nvidia HDMI causing audio problems, and people blacklisting snd-hda-intel to make it go away. If your motherboard audio doesn't depend on that driver, it may be a viable solution. That's all I could really find while I was looking for a citation for the above claim before requesting a citation (in a sibling to your comment.)

As I've said elsewhere I have an original m-Audio Mobile Pre USB and it works great with my nVidia graphics, but that's just one device and that proves little.

yes, that's normal. it's the same for everyone else.

The only car I've ever had stolen was a 1986 IROC.

AMD drops support for old cards from their proprietary drivers with extreme prejudice. nVidia literally supports cards for years longer than AMD. nVidia also provides direct mobile driver downloads; AMD sometimes provides these, and sometimes hides them. AMD also took all their old architectural documentation down from their website, for a while there every search I made which led to a document on their site was 404ing. Fuck AMD sideways.

Nonsense. First, AMD's driver performance lags behind nvidia in general. Second, AMD's linux driver peformance lags well behind their windows driver. Third, AMD frequently drops hardware from the proprietary driver before it is well-supported, and some hardware is never supported properly at all, like the R690M chipset's GPU. Just get graphic trash if I try to use it. But the windows driver is also shit and causes problems with power management.

ATI is just incompetent, and no amount of handwaving can change that. Becoming part of AMD has, if anything, made things worse. Now their parts are competitive, but the drivers are still garbage.

Not really. They've trickled out just enough information to support new cards, while never really providing enough information to use old cards. My R690M still doesn't work properly under Linux.

No, most of the bias against AMD is due to their disastrous drivers today. I've still never had ATI graphics work properly with ATI's driver. If there's not a hacked driver (e.g. DnA) available, then the driver causes me nightmares and headaches. CCC is still festering shit. It's as big as a driver should be by itself.

So far, what it hasn't led to is their hardware working properly, which is a lot more important to most of us.

Nah, it's mostly lip service. They abandon hardware from their driver long before it's properly supported, nVidia supports much older hardware in their driver. And they don't really give all the information you need, just little dribs and drabs.

Maybe someday they will deserve your admiration, but right now, they're fakers. Maybe someday they will e.g. provide the support for Linux to do proper power management of mobile Athlon 64 processors.

Citation? I can't find reports of problems like that with external sound cards. I have an nVidia 750Ti (formerly had a 450GT) and an m-Audio Mobile Pre USB and there are absolutely no problems.

yeah, the nineties were the last time cars were worth a shit, too.

Who the fuck cares?! I can make up ridiculous "what if" scenarios all day long that would seem to justify making every goddamn thing illegal until all that's left is to lock yourself in a padded room with a straight jacket on. But that's stupid, because you'd be acting completely disproportionately to the risk.

And that's what you're doing here too. So fucking what if the modded ECU might cause a fire? So might spilling some gasoline when you fill the car up! So might a short in the wiring! So might a stuck brake caliper! So might crashing into something! There's bunches of different things that could "possibly" go wrong, but they're all perfectly acceptable risks and ECU tuning is no different. Maybe the manufacturer might get blamed for something that was the vehicle owner's fault. Or maybe the owner will get blamed for a crash that was actually caused by a manufacturing defect. Sometimes life isn't fair. Boo fucking hoo; deal with it!

But that's all beside the point, because modding an ECU sure as HELL isn't dangerous enough to justify destroying the concept of ownership of property and replacing it with corporate serfdom, which is what this evil abortion of a policy would do!

You have no clue. On many cars -- especially the increasingly-common turbocharged ones -- ECU tuning is the first, best-bang-for-the-buck, easiest* mod you do.

(* "Easy" in the sense that you pay a tuner who's already broken the DRM and correctly modified the boost map, so all you have to do yourself is plug the ECU-flashing tool into the ODB II port.)

BULLSHIT. This is about using computers -- via copyright -- as the excuse to subjugate vehicle owner's actual property rights to manufacturers Imaginary Property rights, using "safety!" as the emotional red herring that they hope will distract people enough to let them get away with it.

The manufacturers want exactly one thing: post-purchase control, so that they can restrict vehicle owner choice and freeze out independent mechanics. They want to be able to say "oh, you want to pair your new phone with the infotainment system? Sure, that'll be "only" $1000, and no, you're not allowed to hack it yourself or get a cheaper third party to do it. It's all because of 'safety,' not profit -- we swear!"

Then there are the special cute things that can go wrong, like an injector that sticks open instead of pulsing properly. That will turn it into a blowtorch that will burn right through the top of the piston.

Don't forget engine runaways caused by oil leaks in the turbo!

Of course, isn't that all just part of the fun of owning a TDI?

There was plenty of shit in the early nineties, too. OBDII was actually a blessing because you could read your car's codes without a manufacturer's specific tool.

I haven't tried it out yet, but apparently the '90 Miata I recently bought is supposed to beep diagnostic codes at me.

My first car was a 1960 Dodge Dart 2dr (Phoenix) with the 318ci V8 engine. It had 240 or 260 HP (opinions vary) and got over 20 MPG on the freeway... in spite of being 19.5' long, 6.5' wide, and about 4700 pounds wet. You can't compare the sixties and seventies at all.

not have copyright to modify the software

This is where all this copyright bullshit is getting out of hand.

There is one essential thing that copyright is supposed to require: making a damn copy!

Unless the owner is doing that -- and people modifying their own cars won't be -- then copyright has no fucking business kicking in to begin with.

You get a deliberate lockout in those conditions because of immobilizer codes. If I want to swap the PCM, cluster, or immo unit in my A8, I have to involve a dealer so I can recode the unit being replaced.