The output signal of your VGA cards may not be optimal indeed, but the main problem is most probably the LCD monitor. Do you have another monitor to test?

Unfortunately I don't have another (LCD or CRT) monitor around...

I've just tried the next card - Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM VLB (using drivers found on www.mpoli.fi, as I could not find Diamond drivers). If I set 70, 72 or 75Hz for 1024x768 then I can get Windows to run in 1024x768 at 75Hz (always 75, no matter what I set); if I set 60, the monitor will again display that message.

I also got 800x600 at 80Hz (which I didn't even know my monitor can do) - basically I can't establish a deterministic relationship between what I set using the DOS refresh utility and what Windows uses, all I could determine is that Windows seems to be partly affected of those settings, and also seems to affect them (if I set some refresh configuration for various resolutions, I find it altered after running Windows).

I'll keep the Diamond for now, but I'm quite puzzled... frankly I expected my first VLB experience to go much smoother 😀.

After reading your post the second time, your monitor may not be the culprit after all...

Those utilities you use for setting the refresh rate are for DOS, right? Windows 3.11 video drivers usually don't care for these settings, they may even work erratically if the video card is not in the default state. What happens if you load Windows without running the refresh utilities before?

Yes, those utils are for DOS... without running them, Windows behaves as described in the first post (800x600 at most, with only 1280x1024/53Hz with the S3 805 and 1024x768/75Hz with the Diamond).

However, I finally managed to get Diamond drivers for the Stealth 64, and their InControl Tools are just awesome - they let you specify the video modes that the monitor supports (including refresh rates), so I added everything up to 1280x1024, 60Hz only, and this is what the monitor is running at.

So, the Diamond is the Winner... I just wish there were workarounds for the other cards as well.

By the way, do people here run VLB cards on CRT monitors only? 😀

what color-depth are you using for your tests ?

I always tried the maximum that fit the 2MB of RAM (16M for 800x600, 64K for 1024x768, 256 for 1280x1024).

Due to hardware limitations 1024x768 @ 64k colors are only available in interlaced modes on these S3 and CL based cards. These can not be displayed by LCD monitors. 1024x768 @ 256 colors should work on both cards with a 72 Hz refresh.

I am also messing about with a 2MB CL-GD5428 card. I ran the Cirrus Logic DOS utility clmode.exe, and assigned the resolution option of 1024x768 to the frequency option of 60 Hz. This clmode.exe command now appears in my autoexec.bat file. When I boot up, and then enter Windows 3.11, the screen resolution is 1024x768 with a refresh rate of 60 Hz.

Edit: I'm also using a 19" LCD monitor. It's an LG Flatron L1960TR model.