I guess this might be slightly OT, and maybe a little bit of a rant,
though lots of Diamond products are easily 10 years old or older...
I just found out today that the massive archive of drivers and firmware
that was on the the Diamond ftp server [
ftp://ftp.diamondmm.com/] is gone.
I didn't have the bandwidth to mirror it, but I sure hope someone here got
a copy when I recommended months back (Modem/Supra thread) that someone
archive it.
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 for) 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, claiming 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. If other hardware
forums haven't had info about this yet, they probably will soon...
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.
-Toth
Received on Tue May 27 2003 - 20:11:01 BST