Diamond Viper II z200 (resolved)

[Jase]

As for the source of your shock and the heat, some modem cards have a small transformer on them. Additionally, your system, running hot, can be pretty warm if there is poor heat disopation. Touch a heat sink and you may burn yourself. Touch a capacitor and you may get a direct current shock. You have to be careful what you touch in there, even with the power off. Most of the danger is from you to the computer, in the form of static electric shocks to the components. Sometimes it will go the other way.

By the way, you can pick up a TNT2 Mach64 card w/ 32MB RAM for about $35-$50. I have the generic AGP version of that card and not a problem with it since getting it.

[Soback]

Here we go, almoust 2 weeks later I got a reply.

Dear valued customer,

Thank you for contacting Diamond Legacy Product Support.

To solve this issue, I would suggest installing the reference drivers

instead of the Diamond Drivers. The reference drivers provide full support

with OpenGL and DirectX.

1) Go to www.s3graphics.com

2) Select Drivers from the top nav bar.

3) Read through the driver downloads instructions to access the drivers.

4) Once you are in the driver page, select the folder labeled "410drv"

5) Then select the drivers for your Windows O/S from the choices.

Save the appropriate file to your desktop. Once you have completed the

download,

close out of all your programs and execute the file. The file should be

a .zip file in which case you will need to create a new folder on your

desktop to place these drivers. Make sure you remember exactly where you

saved these drivers to.

Set your video adapter to Standard VGA using the instructions below.

Setting the Standard VGA Driver

1. Click on Start

2. Click on Control Panel

3. Click on Display. The Display Properties dialog appears.

4. Choose the Settings tab and click on the Advanced button

5. Click on the Adapter tab and

6. Click on the Change button. The Update Device Wizard appears.

7. Click Next and select Display a list....

8. Click Next and select and Show all Hardware.

9. Click on Standard Display Adapter Types and select Standard Display

Adapter (VGA).

10. Click Next.

11. If a warning dialog appears, asking whether you want to use this

driver, click Yes.

12. Then click Next.

13. Windows asks you if you want to restart your computer. Click Yes.

Your O/S registry no longer has the drivers for the video card in it

because you set your adapter to standard VGA.

C) Start your system back up again. Whenever the add new hardware wizard

pops up, direct the wizard to the folder you saved those reference

drivers to on your desktop and install the reference drivers.

[Soback]

I went into their archive, and they have 4 drivers for win98, can someone help me, I don't know which one of them to download, I need to decide between 1.Windows 9x 9.10.30 2. Windows 9x 9.50.05 or this 3.DVI w/localization Windows 9x 9.50.05 . I have no idea what the difference between 9.10.30 and 9.50.05 and that DVI in the 3rd choice is. Can anyone explain that to me?

[Soback]

What does Enbinary means?

[Soback]

Well, what do you know, they do have drivers which support DX8. Ok, whoever has this card, you can go to the website mentioned 2 posts above and download the very first driver version for windows 98. It will be 1mb, and is release version 9015. It fixed all the glitches I had in EP2 demo, screen doesn't flash, I can see all text and planets look fine and no artifacts in FPmode. NICE.

[Hunted]

yeah my v550 is doing good too? whats up with that?

[Soback]

Well, actually I got GeForce 3 now and believe me, the improvment is incredible. So there is a difference between working with DX8 and fully supporting DX8. Yeah, the demo worked on that card but the graphics didn't look all that good. Now the whole thing is 100 times more enjoyable. So upgrading to a card that can utilize the DX8 features is well worth it.

[Gallion]

Download DX8.1 from M$.

The nVidia 21.83 WHQL drivers are the best in my experience.

TTFN

[Guest]

OK, I moved the topic over here to the video support section.

Good job Soback, Guess what? I am at my mom's for thanksgiving and sure enough she has this same video card.

So thanks to you and your fight to get this right, I am now playing BCM at my mothers house!!

Thank you, I owe you a BIG one.

And so will some others, because this card is fairly popular!!

Good Job!!

[ 11-21-2001: Message edited by: Jaguar ]

[Soback]

Welcome, gotta warn you though, after playing with a card that has full support for DX8 you would be very dissapointed when you play it on anything else. But at least it's playable.

[Supreme Cmdr]

Good call.

I should probably add this to the FAQ when I get the chance.