FWIW the card I have is Rev.D, I think it needs BIOS version 3.0 or later. I have found a BIOS ver 2.07 and it doesn't work. The card is still not recognized at boot

Maybe something from here ftp://ftp.dyu.edu.tw/pub/Hardware/vendor/Diam … isplay/stealth/ will be suitable ?

Unfortunately not. I have downloaded and combed through all they had, there are plenty of drivers but no BIOS images. There wouldn't be downloadable BIOS images from the vendor because these cards are based on an EPROM chip and cannot be upgraded or flashed like we do BIOS flashing these days - you need a programmer and pulling the chip for it.

So unless someone pulled the chip from the card and read its contents with a programmer, it won't be available.

I have found some BIOS images for S3 Vision968 cards made by other companies (not Diamond) here: http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/cards/item/355-s3-vision968 I have tried them all but they don't work. Card is still not detected at boot with either of them.

(off-topic: back in the day - 1990s - I had a SCSI RAID adapter and I found a bug in the BIOS. I contacted the company, they fixed the bug but they had to ship to me a physical BIOS chip to install in the card because like this one it was based on an EPROM chip)

stamasd wrote on 2022-12-05, 12:01:

Unfortunately not. I have downloaded and combed through all they had, there are plenty of drivers but no BIOS images. There woul […]
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Unfortunately not. I have downloaded and combed through all they had, there are plenty of drivers but no BIOS images. There wouldn't be downloadable BIOS images from the vendor because these cards are based on an EPROM chip and cannot be upgraded or flashed like we do BIOS flashing these days - you need a programmer and pulling the chip for it.

So unless someone pulled the chip from the card and read its contents with a programmer, it won't be available.

I have found some BIOS images for S3 Vision968 cards made by other companies (not Diamond) here: http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/cards/item/355-s3-vision968 I have tried them all but they don't work. Card is still not detected at boot with either of them.

(off-topic: back in the day - 1990s - I had a SCSI RAID adapter and I found a bug in the BIOS. I contacted the company, they fixed the bug but they had to ship to me a physical BIOS chip to install in the card because like this one it was based on an EPROM chip)

Sure I have a couple of Rev C7 's, one with v3.00 & one with v3.03 (what's the best way to 'software' dump the BIOS). Meantime are any of these (bottom of the page) any help

http://www.edv-janssen.synology.me/diamond/dr … v3xx0/files.htm

Thank you for that find, very useful. It allowed me to make some progress, but the card still isn't working yet.
I tried several versions of BIOS from that site, going at first down in version order: 3.03, 3.02a, 3.01, 3.00. With any of those, the motherboard still gives me the beep sequence for "no video card found"

Then I noticed that the dates of all of the BIOS files above are in 1995, whereas my actual card has a PCB date of late 1996.

Out all of the BIOS files on the site, the only one with a date in 1996 is 1.09d (early 1996 that is). So I tried that one, and this time the motherboard didn't complain of missing video card and booted into Windows. But I still had no image on the screen. I powered off, and booted again this time with a second (AGP) card in the system so I could see what's going on.
Long story short, the card is seen by Everest

At this point, 2 theories:
1. Something else is wrong with the card, maybe the RAMDAC is bad? FWIW the chips on the card (both the large S3 chip and the RAMDAC) do get warm while in use - not hot but warm.
2. The BIOS is closer to being the correct one, but not quite. Several BIOS files are marked as being specific for cards with IBM RAMDAC (like my card does) but not this one version 1.09d.

So I think I'm getting closer, but I'm still looking for BIOS with a date in 1996 and made for cards with IBM RAMDAC.

Hmm maybe I'm wrong... the BIOS version 3.03 is from 1996 (02/19/96) and IS marked for IBM RAMDAC, but it does not work: video card is not found with that BIOS installed 🙁

Further update: I have come to realize that several pins on the S3 chip were bent, some also lifted from the pads, where the card must have suffered a blow in the past... I tried to straighten them and ended up with broken pins. 🙁 So it was a hardware problem after all, and now it's probably completely dead. Thanks for the help.