Booze and boat anchors




I am having some degree of difficulty trying to keep my computer from becoming a boat anchor. The story goes like this. I have an average machine -- 486DX4-100, 16Mb RAM, 6 speed CD-ROM, running Windows 95 (yes I weakened!), Sound Blaster Pro compatible card. I have since added a Diamond Stealth 64 Vesa card with 1Mb of DRAM. It is at this point that my journey into alcoholism commenced.
When I added that card my screen became scrambled so I removed it, reinstalled my old card, got the system running and then put the new card back in. This at least worked until I used the Setup Wizard that comes with the driver software at which point we get scrambled again.
Well, finally the darn thing is running and all is well as long as I don't change resolutions. By the way, my monitor is an Osborne MPV 1024 non-interlaced (actually built by Philips I had discovered).
What is galling me is that some of my favourite games that ran perfectly with my old card won't run with the new card even though the game says that it is supported for it. I run my games in DOS and not under Windows 95 unless the game says that it runs only under Windows. I can't even install the things because all I get is scrambled video.
It's not fair. Can you help? by By the way, great mag!
Thanks for your time and help if you can, I'm off to get another beer.
- Steve Barnett


Thanks for your letter, Steve. Graphics cards can be a pain. One thing that bothers me -- would a PC make a decent boat anchor? Wouldn't it be better if they made PC cases with sharp flanges or hooks sticking out, so that they'd catch on the muddy ocean bed and dig in? Would it work better if you left the modem and other peripherals attached? I can't help thinking a typical PC would drag in any sort of wind, no matter how powerful the processor.
I wish I could give you a quick solution. Try running the game under Win95 in a DOS window. Sometimes this works better. I once had two games of Heretic, a very demanding game, running under Win95 at the same time. How useful was this? Not at all.
Chances are it's driver problems. Try using S3 drivers rather than Diamond-specific ones. Scouring the Internet for new drivers may help. Try the Diamond site at http://www.diamondmm.com/product-support/driver-index.html and the S3 site at ftp://ftp.s3.com/pub/bbs/0main/topindex.htm
There are plenty of letters in newsgroups discussing problems with Diamond graphics cards and Win95, so you're not alone. A letter in a newsgroup talked of the "dubious quality of Diamond drivers", but I wouldn't know about that. Another letter in an Internet newsgroup suggested disabling Video ROM BIOS shadowing otherwise the Diamond card will not work. Does anybody else know of a fix for this?
- Neale Morison


Category: Hardware
Issue: Nov 1996
Pages: 155-158

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