Diamond Stealth 64 VRAM - BIOS v1.05 (or 1.06)

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Last update: 25th February, 1996

Symptoms

After installing the 32 bit driver provided with a Diamond Stealth 64 Video VRAM 2mb card you recieve a c000005 error while trying boot shortly after the OS/2 Image is displayed.

Hardware

Diamond Stealth 64 Video VRAM 2mb with 1.06 (or 1.05) version BIOS.

Problem

The problem is that OS/2 Warp v.3 does not support "DEC" while the 1.06 BIOS on the current Stealth card does. This causes the lock-up. Diamond can confirm this since they were the ones who informed me of the incompatiblity.

BTW: I don't know exactly what DEC stands for or if it is the correct acronym

Procedure

You simply need to call Diamond and tell them the problem. They will send you a BIOS version 1.04 free of charge. Pull the 1.06 bios and install the 1.04. OS/2 Warp should now reboot.

Galen Rhodes writes (23rd December, 1995):

Diamond has a new variant on the Diamond Stealth 64 VRAM called the "Diamond Stealth 64 VIDEO VRAM." This new card (which arrived in my new Pentium at work) contains code in it's BIOS to allow the card to automagically detect the monitor type for those monitors which support the feature. Otherwise the card is identical to the Diamond Stealth 64 VRAM except for the BIOS which is version 1.05 or higher.

In hear lies the problem. The BIOS version 1.05 is incompatible with OS/2 WARP. The symptom is that OS/2 locks up during reboot and continues to do so until you restore the VGA drivers. NOTE: this is different than the SYSLEVEL problem with the install program.

The solution is to call Diamond and request a BIOS with version 1.04 code.

Galen Rhodes
Team OS/2
grhodes@moscow.com
http://www.uidaho.edu/~rhode923/

Jason Nielsen