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 _______________________________________________ XFree86 mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xfree86