Installing Latest S3 Drivers for Diamond Cards on Warp

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Last update: 6th November, 1995

Symptoms

Windows applications trapping.
Digital video not displaying properly even with VIDEO_APERTURE statemtent.

Hardware

Diamond video cards using S3 chipset.

Problem

Problem with drivers.

Procedure

  1. Make sure you have a current backup.

  2. Re-install standard VGA drivers using the selective install, SETVGA.EXE, or from the recovery options and reboot the system.

  3. Copy s3w*.drv to a safe place, some s3 cards have a problem with the new fullscreen drivers. The drivers will be in /windows/system (Warp for Windows) or /os2/mdos/winos2/system (Warp with Windows). Make a note of the driver referred to in your system.ini file (fdisplay for Warp for Windows, display for Warp with Windows).

  4. Download S3252.zip from ftp-os2.cdrom.com /pub/os2/drivers/s3252.zip and unpack the archive onto your hard drive.

  5. Run syslevel.exe to find the current system level of syslevel.os2.

  6. This archive seems to have the required fixes in place except for the following which addition which will save you time when installing later versions of the OS. Change the following lines to reflect the correct system level:

    %2\OS2\INSTALL\MKSYSLVL %2\OS2\INSTALL\SYSLEVEL.OS2 XR02110 >NUL
    ECHO Updated syslevel.os2 with XR02110 >> %2\OS2\INSTALL\DISPLAY.LOG
    
  7. Since you will be running the install off of your hard drive instead of from floppies, you need to specify the full path of the source instead of just the drive letter (eg. s3inst.cmd d:\s3 d: ).

    If you get an invalid file error of some sort when running the install, more than likely your unpack.exe and unpack2.exe were corrupted. Copy them from your install disks or CD over the existing ones under your /os2 path and your problem should go away.

  8. Reboot.

  9. Open up a fullscreen dos session and execute the dos utility that came with your card for setting refresh rates. If you have a Diamond Stealth 64VRAM, you may NOT a custom monitor type. Most people with this card (including myself) seem to be able to use the NEC5FG monitor type with no problems.

  10. Go into your system setup folder and run the display driver install utility. This archive includes the new dspinstl.exe executable, but it may be incompatible with some system levels. If you get an error about dsp files, rename dspinstl.exe to dspinstl.old and rename dspinstl.sav to dspinstl.exe. You may have to reboot again for this to work. Scroll up to the top of the list of drivers and select the 32 Bit S3 Display Drivers V2.52. When presented with the next pop-up menu, select Install Using Display Adaptor Utility Program. You must include the full path and extension of this program. Check the documentation that came with this program for how to just query it for information. If you have a Diamond Stealth 64VRAM, you would use:

         drive:path\s64mode.exe monitor
    

    After setting the refresh for all of the supported video modes, it will then ask for you to insert the driver diskette. You will need to click on Change and enter the path where you installed the archive to, then select Install. If the installation asks for disk 2, just select OK.

  11. Reboot the system when the install is complete.

  12. Go into the System folder within the System Setup folder and select the desired resolution/color depth from the first page. Close the System folder, and reboot.

  13. Open up a fullscreen windows session. If a mouse cursor does not appear for you, edit the fdisplay (os/2 for windows) or the display (os/2 with windows) variable setting in system.ini to point to your old fullscreen driver, copying it back to the appropriate directory in case it was over written by the install process.

Notes

This should be pretty complete, but I wrote it around 05:30, so who knows what I may have missed due to fatigue. I submitted this procedure to help people over-come problems that were not covered in all s3 driver installation procedures, and hopefully it is the most up-to-date reference out so far. For more questions, please email me at the address below.
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