Hints on installing the Diamond Stealth 64 Video card with OS/2 Warp.

David Lerner, Vienna, VA 9/4/95

The Steath 64 video card uses the S3 Vision 868 chip (86C868). This chip
requires its own drivers. The required files are on Diamond's BBS and
ftp site (ftm.diamondmm.com); they are svos2a.exe and svos2b.exe. These
are self extracting pkzip archives. Two floppy disks should be
prepared from the archived files. The file readme.s3 in the first
archive gives installation instructions. This posting shold help in
working around problems in following these instructions.

The 2 diskettess that are created must each be read during the first
phase of the installation, and read again after a reboot. The diskettes
MUST be labeled with the label command as follows:

Source file          Label        External label (optional)
-----------          --------     ----------------------------
svos2a.exe           S3 DRV1      S3 Display Driver Diskette 1
svos2b.exe           S3 DRV2      S3 Display Driver Diskette 2

The need for labeling is not mentioned in the instructions and Diamond
technical support is not aware of this requirement.

IBM technical support advised me to rename two files in the
OS2/INSTALL directory. I took thier advice, but I have not verified that
this is a necessary step. The files are wp9000.sys and wp9100.sys. They
can be renamed to anything, just so that they are hidden from the
installation software. They can be restored after the installation.

The first step of the install patches various system files. Nothing will
be patched, and error messages will be written to a log file if you have
installed the service pack for Warp. The service pack must be
installed before the display driver installation as it can not be
applied afterward. The installation log is not described in the
instructions. This is juat as well, as you should ignore its contents.

After the reboot the instructions call for opening the"OS/2 System"
folder, then the "System Setup" folder, and then the "Display Driver
Install" object. The problem is that there is no such object in OS/2
Warp. The "Device Driver Install" object  confused me during the
installation; it should not be used. Instead, open an OS/2 command
window and enter: d:\os2\install\dspinstl (substiute your OS/2 drive
letter for d:). This will start the Display Driver Install program.

After another roboot the instructions call for executing the command:
 C:\GO95\GO95.EXE. This program needs to be installed from the
DOS/Utilities/CAD/NT Drivers diskette that is distributed with the
video card. The installation can be performed from the DOS Full Screen
command prompt just prior to it's use in the installation.

The final steps in the instructions should be followed to set up the
screen resolution that you are after. The 640 x 480 x 265 display has
poor quality on a high resolution display with a disturbing pattern of
vertical lines caused by the bit clock. The 800 x 600 x 256 mode is
better with faint vertical lines. The 1024 x 768 x 256 display provides
excellent results on my 17" monitor.


