Hello !

I have a Expertcolor DSV5357 that suffers from this problem. Is it possible to patch its bios ? (there it is

) I'd like to know how you patch these bioses as well. Maybe we could make a automatic patching utility for that ?

I'm sure I have other cards with that problem but I haven't tested them.

I was actually just wondering about this as well the other day, as I purchased another GX2 in the hopes that it would be correct, which it wasn't. While the small tools provided work fine under DOS, you can't use them in Windows. If there was a reliable way to patch each VBIOS (from what I gather, a checksum would need to be recalculated as well?) then it would be at the correct levels at boot and you wouldn't even have to worry about it. I don't know anything about doing this kind of thing, but maybe someone else can find a way? This is probably a tall order but maybe it's possible.

I bought two of S3 Trio 3D/2Xs recently and they both exhibit the same issue. In text mode only, blacks are washed out and there are vertical bars when viewed on an LCD. The vertical bars do not appear on my CRT but the blacks are still washed out.

I saw a video by Phil where he talked about this issue on the S3 Trop64V+ but I didn't realize that the problem extended to other models as well. I've included a photo of some markings on the back from the manufacturer which suggests that both of these cards were manufactured around the same time or are simply an identical revision.

Here is a link to Phil's video:

https://youtu.be/N_5suEoXTc8

I can confirm that the following workaround successfully corrects the issue temporarily until the next reboot:

S3 AGP Cards (and possibly others) Too Bright

If I want this to be a permanent fix then I would need to replace the BIOS chip. What would be the cheapest chip programmer that would be able to do this? I don't have one.

The BIOS chip on these beneath the sticker are a A276308-70 which I think are only one-time programmable (as indicated by OTP on the datasheet). What kind of chip would be a suitable replacement?

Hi Kahenraz, have you found a bios and load it to shadow or you did the 3c5 register trick to fix your luminosity level ?

I have some w27c512-45 that *might* be compatible, if you have the bios and dont live too far maybe I can just snail mail you a programmed eprom. I found a s3 trio 3d 86c365 on my spair and the bios is an an atmel at27c512r. Otherwise to answer your question I use xgecu tl866ii plus and it seem to support your amic chip (http://www.autoelectric.cn/MiniPro/TL866II_List.txt). My only regret about that thing is that I did not bought it earlier.

I used the debug 3c5 register trick. Is there a way to load one of the BIOSes in this thread into shadow ROM to verify compatibility?

Just use s3black.com from this post Re: S3 AGP Cards (and possibly others) Too Bright in autoexec.bat.
This is all you need 😀

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-08-20, 06:00:

I used the debug 3c5 register trick. Is there a way to load one of the BIOSes in this thread into shadow ROM to verify compatibility?

Right, just look at page 4 of this thread, user wbc have a file sbvl.zip attached. You can use it to load temporarily a bios into your shadow ram (make sure it's enabled in your mainboard bios, it's often called video shadow enabled/disabled), hopefully one if the .cps (triton, sis...) in the archive will be compatible with your chipset. Once you find a bios that work for you, you can burn it on an eprom as a permanent solution and move on with your life 😉

I have the S3 Trio3D/2X both in PCI and AGP versions and they're great for DOS. I'm currently using it on my Socket 7 machine.

Using S3BLACK.COM in AUTOEXEC.BAT as zyga64 said works as intended, however there is another way using a utility called CONFIX which allows to use the in and out instructions in CONFIG.SYS and this is the one that I use since it does the workaround prior to executing AUTOEXEC.BAT.

1DEVICE=C:\CONFIX\CONFIX.SYS OUT 3C4 08
2DEVICE=C:\CONFIX\CONFIX.SYS OUT 3C5 06
3DEVICE=C:\CONFIX\CONFIX.SYS OUT 3C4 27
4DEVICE=C:\CONFIX\CONFIX.SYS OUT 3C5 00
5DEVICE=C:\CONFIX\CONFIX.SYS OUT 3C4 08
6DEVICE=C:\CONFIX\CONFIX.SYS OUT 3C5 00

I have an thing for this card which allows it to use UniVBE. This is because while it has an amazing VBE 2.0 implementation it has some bugs that are not present on the previous S3 cards when using VESA video modes on certain programs.

Best would be if anyone can use the right value on the bios, I did some test but I was unable to locate the exact location :\
In that way it would be possible to update the bios without using any additional dos command.

Nemo1985 wrote on 2021-08-20, 16:50:

Best would be if anyone can use the right value on the bios, I did some test but I was unable to locate the exact location :\
In that way it would be possible to update the bios without using any additional dos command.

It depends of the S3 model as some has the BLANK pedastal located on a different register.

S3 ViRGE based cards (except GX2 versions) seems to have this located at SR1A bit 5 (sequence register, from the S3 ViRGE/VX programming datasheet). Later cards have this parameter located at SR27 bit 3.

Edit: Didn't notice that wbc has posted a similar information prior in this same thread.

The DEBUG command for the setting off SR1A bit 5 is this:

1o 3c4 08
2o 3c5 06
3o 3c4 1a
4i 3c5
5<subtract 20h from given value>
6o 3c5 <resulting_value>
7q

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-08-20, 17:04:

It depends of the S3 model as some has the BLANK pedastal located on a different register.
S3 ViRGE based cards (except GX2 versions) seems to have this located at SR1A bit 5 (sequence register, from the S3 ViRGE/VX programming datasheet). Later cards have this parameter located at SR27 bit 3.

OMG that would be so awesome if it work ! I was not successful at finding those values... We could fix pre vesa 2.0 bios that still have the font maxis game used !! And we could fix latest s3 virge bios and dont have to use random version that dont have the issue !!! I'll check it out later on and get back to you about it. Thanks

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-08-20, 17:04:

Nemo1985 wrote on 2021-08-20, 16:50:

Best would be if anyone can use the right value on the bios, I did some test but I was unable to locate the exact location :\
In that way it would be possible to update the bios without using any additional dos command.

It depends of the S3 model as some has the BLANK pedastal located on a different register.

S3 ViRGE based cards (except GX2 versions) seems to have this located at SR1A bit 5 (sequence register, from the S3 ViRGE/VX programming datasheet). Later cards have this parameter located at SR27 bit 3.

That's a good catch, despite the different location of supported cards, modify a s3 bios is quite straight forward, there is a sumcheck that's quite easy to calculate.
I remember I was able to modify the frequencies without issues a year back or so.

From a mention of this thread I curiously read here.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-08-20, 02:47:

In text mode only, blacks are washed out and there are vertical bars when viewed on an LCD. The vertical bars do not appear on my CRT but the blacks are still washed out.

I find it just awesome that nobody seems to look at the possibility that this phenomenon could be hardware related.

As I am very flicker-sensitive, I already in 1989 overclocked my Tseng ET3000 by exchanging some xtal oscillators to get higher refresh rates.
When I did that, I observed vertical stripes, just like @Kahenraz showed in a photo in his post above.
The reason was obvious: the supply voltages' surges fed back to the output signal.
The solution was easy and straightforward: improve the decoupling by adding some ceramic caps.

I observed this phenomenon also with some other graphics cards which I overclocked for better refresh rates, and adding caps always fixed the issue.
In some cases it was also necessary not only to add caps to the DAC section, but also to the CRTC and RAM sections, in particular when white/colored vertical bars appeared which are otherwise typical of bad video ram.

I just do not understand why nobody else seems to think of this simple cause and remedy.

retardware wrote on 2021-09-21, 15:12:

From a mention of this thread I curiously read here. […]
Show full quote

From a mention of this thread I curiously read here.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-08-20, 02:47:

In text mode only, blacks are washed out and there are vertical bars when viewed on an LCD. The vertical bars do not appear on my CRT but the blacks are still washed out.

I find it just awesome that nobody seems to look at the possibility that this phenomenon could be hardware related.

As I am very flicker-sensitive, I already in 1989 overclocked my Tseng ET3000 by exchanging some xtal oscillators to get higher refresh rates.
When I did that, I observed vertical stripes, just like @Kahenraz showed in a photo in his post above.
The reason was obvious: the supply voltages' surges fed back to the output signal.
The solution was easy and straightforward: improve the decoupling by adding some ceramic caps.

I observed this phenomenon also with some other graphics cards which I overclocked for better refresh rates, and adding caps always fixed the issue.
In some cases it was also necessary not only to add caps to the DAC section, but also to the CRTC and RAM sections, in particular when white/colored vertical bars appeared which are otherwise typical of bad video ram.

I just do not understand why nobody else seems to think of this simple cause and remedy.

Getting a card from a decent manufacturer (seems that not many is getting this when buying one) and avoiding noname ones can help as image quality may vary. CRT monitor were commonly used back then so these stripes that Kahenraz showed weren't noticeable until recently when LCD monitors became mainstream.

Besides the S3 Trio3D/2X cards I currently have, none of my other S3 cards suffers from the brightness bug. I actually don't recommend a Trident card for anything, there are much better cards in terms of performance and their VESA implementation is the worst of all the cards I have tried. Only the VGA compatibility makes for it though.

Sorry for the necro but I wanted to chime in with some relevant info.

wbc wrote on 2015-10-05, 14:35:

(my previous post has not been sumbitted, dunno why)
For S3 Trio64V2/DX or GX you can try this video BIOS (in attachment) that does not have brightness issue. It is also capable of VBE 2.0 support (no more TSR's like UNIVBE or S3VBE20 in memory! well, almost 😀)

but be aware of card with this bios + Intel 440LX\EX or 440BX\ZX motherboards, seems that they crash Windows.

I just tried this bios on my PCI cardex trio64v2/dx. Original BIOS was version 1.01.05, it had the grey blacks issue, VBE 1.2, plus it was glitchy on some games and in win95. Bought a replacement chip (original was a one time program EPROM, replacement is AT29C256 part), used a programmer to write this bios on it, switched the chips and it works great. VBE 2.0 enabled, no more glitches, and the bright blacks issue is completely gone. Thank you 😀

I kept the original in case it'd ever be needed or this one has a serious problem I haven't come across again. Attaching it here in case someone out there needs it for some reason (maybe tried a flash and it didn't work for theirs so they need it back again). It does have the brightness issue so a debug command will be needed to correct it.