I just found out yesterday that the massive archive of docs, drivers, and
firmware that was on the the Diamond ftp server [ftp://ftp.diamondmm.com/]
is gone. Due to mergers over the years, the archives covered products from
these companies and more:
Diamond Multimedia
Orchid
Micronics
Supra
S3
Obviously, the Diamond Multimedia, Orchid, and S3 files are of the most
interest when working with older video cards.
The support page for Diamond products
[http://www.diamondmm.com/support/diamond/] formerly contained links to
files on the ftp server. It now has the following posted:
S3 or Diamond Brand Support
We no longer support customer service or warranty claims on any of our
legacy products sold under the former S3 or Diamond brand. As we no
longer manufacture these products, and have not for some time, our
customer care and warranty claim call volumes related to these products
are extremely low. Because of this, we made the decision to discontinue
support for these products. If you are experiencing problems with your
Diamond or S3 legacy product please contact an independent repair
professional. We appreciate your understanding in this matter and hope
that this change does not inconvenience you greatly.
The above statement seems totally ludicrous, as how is an independent
repair professional (which I think I more than qualify as) supposed to
support these products without the files that were available on the ftp
site?
I put in a call to their technical support staff at (206) 515-1400, and
when I selected option '5' for diamond products, it referred me back to
the above support url, stating that support files were available on the
website. The phone system then hung up, and I called back again selecting
the Supra support and 'other' products...same thing. I finally got someone
on the line by selecting Supra support and the first and only product the
phone system mentioned. I think it was option 4 and 1. Talk about a
nightmare.
Turns out, they've suddenly had a massive influx of calls from other
slightly annoyed customers who still support and use all this obsolete
hardware. Personally, I don't see how hardware can be obsolete if it
works and does exactly what you need it to. They also seemed to have no
clue that older versions of firmware and such are very important when
maintaining and supporting these things. The ftp server formerly contained
nearly every version that had been released. Now its all gone. Some of
these products were only a couple of years old too. I haven't seen any
mention of this in the hardware circles yet, but I don't think many people
have realized yet what has happened.
If anyone else wants to call and ask questions, the phone number above
should get you though to someone. I've asked them about returning the ftp
site to its former state, as that would seem to be the best solution for
everyone right now. Longterm, probably the best thing would be to place
the files in the public domain.
I would also really like to see programming docs for the S3 and Orchid
chips made available and or placed in the public domain, but I have no
idea if they even still have them.
-Toth
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