First post, by auron
i have a couple of s3 vision series cards from elsa (winner 1000, 2000 etc), something they all have in common is non-standard higher refreshrates baked into the video BIOS. it's not that bad if it works, but i've had enough issues with it that i consider it a quite poorly implemented idea. on my vision 968 card from 1995, some of the low-res VESA 2.0 modes added by S3VBE20, like 400x300 (at 70-something hz) display heavily distorted, sort of like a bad VHS tape, on a trinitron much newer than those cards, and a vision 864 card from 1994 would just constantly swap between refresh rates every 30 seconds or so in DOS games.
supposedly there is an s3 DOS tool to adjust refresh rates, maybe anyone has it? or possibly there were some bios updates from elsa? also i wonder how this works anyway, are these cards able to at least poll EDID, even under DOS? i'm not sure how well cheaper monitors would have tolerated being run out of spec like that, not to mention fixed-sync ones...
i am aware of univbe of course, it's a tool i generally avoid due to flaky experiences with it, unless it'd be needed for some game as last resort.