Hi Bill,

BG> In case you missed this, I have forwarded it to TML, as I believe
BG> that you were running one of these video cards at one stage...
BV> No, I didn't miss it. I just didn't want to reply to it. :)
BG> Oh, fair enough.  At least you're honest.  ;-)

If nothing else I do *try* to be honest.

BG> Does anybody else run a Diamond ..[chomp]..
BG> Ah, a different card, and you're right, the drivers are indeed shit.
BV> I have also had the Diamond Stealth Pro ..[chomp]..
BG> So who writes these drivers, and why are they so bad?

Some are written by Panacea , others are written by Diamond.
Hard to explain why they are so bad. They just stuff up and don't
display things properly. FOr example, in WinWord you get stuff that
you can't see if it is close to the border of the screen. Lot's of
little annoying things.

BV> Would I recommend a Diamond Video card to anyone ???
BV> Depends on wether I'm selling mine or not :)
BG> Jeeze, are you the John Rich of LOCSYSOP or what!  ;-)

John Rich ?

BV> PS. You should be okay with the ISA card though. Especially if
BV> the price is right and you can find some "generic" drivers for it.
BG> That's the trouble, the drivers I have are for OS/2 2.1 GA, and
BG> although I have hex-edited the supplied DSPINSTL ute to install
BG> the drivers on drive D: (and they install just fine, exactly as
BG> the manual install directions suggest), it doesn't seem to work
BG> too well with the 2.11 CSD, and some of the DOS drivers are simply
BG> not being recognised or loaded, which gives me a shitty screen font
BG> in OS/2 and VDM windowed sessions.

Hmmm... I didn't play with OS/2 for long enough to see any specific
problems with the S3 drivers although the ones I installed were the
IBM ones from their BBS. Dunno if they had problems or not.

BG> The WPS is fine though, and very quick at 800x600x256 (the maximum
BG> I can use on this little supposedly 14" SVGA), and Win-OS2 absolutely
BG> screams, but I'm just not happy with the driver support, and I don't
BG> where to obtain later ones.  Diamond have a BBS in the US, but I'm
BG> loath to waste several bux on an ISD call unnecessarily.

So, send them a fax with your Sportshoe. Tell them the revision of
your ROM as well and they might send you a new BIOS and driver set.
I've had a few updates sent from them which included new BIOS chips
but by the time they arrived, I had sold the card and the new owner
hadn't complained.

I'd offer to let you use my fax number for a reply, but if you were
to do that it would be recognised. No doubt the support guy would
say, "Fuck me dead, that Vettoretti bloke has gone and bought
another one . He must be a sucker for punishment" :)

BG> Never mind, I'll persevere with it for a while, but it may just be
BG> too early a model card to be all that great under OS/2 (the book
BG> doesn't even mention OS/2, BTW), although by all accounts, under
BG> Windows 3.1 it is extremely fast.  Big fucking deal - I don't run Win31

You shouldn't have a problem. Any generic S3 801/805 drivers should
work. In fact, I think IBM have used the 801 or 805 chip in some of
their on-board VGA setups so you should be able to get some support
direct from IBM. You may need to chase Diamond if a BIOS update is
required though.

BG> I still have the ET4000 card just in case though.  ;-)

After the S3 it will seem much slower though.

Regards, Brenton

PS. Everything in my place is breaking down at the moment. 
    My Philips VCR has developed a problem whereby the color stuffs
    up until it has warmed up. It is only visible when watching TV
    stuff and tapes seem to be okay even if the unit is not warm.
    The symptoms on-screen are hard to describe but some stations
    are all black and white while others show a few bands of color.
    The color seems to come up after about 20-30 minutes.
    Any ideas ?
@EOT:

--- PQWK215