What driver are you looking for? There are drivers for diamond and s3 all
over the net.
I don't see this as being uncommon in the computer industry. Companies get
bought out and the documents/driver are kept around a few years and then
they are dumped to save on the website/ftpsite/bandwidth/domain name
charges.
If you support a particular product you have sold, then you should keep the
relevant drivers and information handy on your machine. As far as repairing
those products, I cant think of anything that would not be cheaper to trash
and replace then to repair. Modems these days are dirt cheap, and you can
still find non-winmodems for sale at surplus sites on the net.
There is also the possibility that drivers for another devise built with the
same chipset would work with your card. My diamond mx300 is an aureal
chipset and I use aureals drivers (still available even though aureal is no
more), my diamond monster 3d II uses the drivers from 3dfx, etc. I dont own
any s3 products besides a bunch of real old video cards and those are
avilable from other sites if needed.
In general just winimage driver disks (for older hardware that had drivers
on floppy) and store them on tape backup or on cd. Its very cheap to do.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tothwolf" <tothwolf_at_concentric.net>
To: <cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 9:19 PM
Subject: OT? Supera and Diamond Multimedia support
> 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 - 20:37:00 BST