From: jtn@moscom.com (John Nielsen)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: !!!Speed Star Help and be Helped!!!
Summary: Help with video problems and nightmares
Keywords: HELP HELP VIDEO SPEED STAR
Date: 17 Nov 92 19:55:35 GMT
Organization: Moscom Corp., E. Rochester, NY
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.3 beta PL7]

I am sorry for rehashing an old subject, but just solving a problem
and not knowing why bothers me.  It seems to me that allot
of people are, or have had a problem getting their diamond
speed star video controllers to work.  Their has been allot of 
suggestions and allot of confusion that should be straighten out.
I am one of these people and would really appreciate an explanation
of the following. I believe any answers to this post will help many
people in the same boat as me.

EQUIPMENT:
OS2 w/ CSD installed
Gateway 2000 386, 33 w/ 8meg
Diamond SpeedStar Plus with 1meg
crystal scan 1024 non interlaced monitor 'cs1024ni'
1meg boot manager
10meg primary dos partition
109meg logical drive with OS2 HPFS

PROBLEM:
I was able to get OS2 to run in both 800x600 and 1024x768 but 
without the program vmode.com that comes with the video board. 
I have version 5.0 of vmode.com. I used the selective install method 
to first get 640 res then again to get 800 res then finally to
get 1024 res. As I upgraded to a higher res each time my monitor would
go out of sync and became useless. I created a setmode.bat and
added a startup.cmd with start /fs /dos d:\setmode.bat this opened \
up a full screen dos session where my setmode.bat executed the commands
c:\dos\vmode monitor. I had previously set the monitor switch to
custom where I had chosen  what seemed to be appropriate
settings for my card and monitor. Each time I'd boot os2 it would
be out of sync. I would go back into dos and change the monitor
switch to different refresh rates and sync polarities and run
vmode again. After doing this a few times while constantly doing
svga off / svga on I'd boot and to my surprise the monitor would
be in high res with no sync problem, But wait vmode.com has not run
yet it is still coming up on the screen. As soon as it runs I'm out
of sync again.  I eliminate the setmode.bat from my startup and
wham I have high res video for the pm desktop.  This scenario was
performed for 800x600. Feeling brave now I do the same thing for
1024x768 and after many reboots / chkdsk /f's I was able to
get High res without the vmode program.  My next step was to
test winos2. Upon entering it it was out of sync the csd drivers in
the system.ini were not working, I replaced them with vga.drv and
swinvga.drv (the default drivers) and I now have vga res in my winos2 session. 
I exit out and I am starring at a black screen, my pm desktop never came
back. I rebooted and set the set_dos_notification to on and entered
winos2 again this time upon exiting I saw the pm desktop so I went
back in to close winos2 but wait where is my mouse! Its gone.
The only way to get it back is to turn the set_dos_notification off
sounds like a circular dependency to me.  Needless to say I decided to
try a seamless window. When the program loaded it turned my screen
into what seemed an to be an out of sync vga res --unusable-- I never
got that to work. 
After all this I reinstalled the CSD and got back vga mode --You
only have to install disks 1,2,12,13,14 to get back after an unusable
video wont let you do anything. 

Well what in the world is going on -- a bug in svga.exe -- maybe!!
but I can't run 'svga on' when I boot dos. I get some kind of error message.
What about my vmode.com program what was its problem. vmode 38 does not 
work vmode cs1024ni does not work. If I use custom what refresh
rates and polarities should I use? Why was I in high res before
my vmode.com program ran? I should add I had no problem
using my equipment in widows high res. what happened when I tried to 
run seamless window? where is my mouse in winos2?

Any incite into the above problems would be greatly appreciated.
I am giving it another couple of days of computer down time and
then I will have no choice but to switch back to windows and
wait for windows NT to come out. I guess windows NT already has
high res drivers available for there beta version.
I can also use my Sydos removable hard drive which is unusable 
under os2 but thats a problem for another day!!

Thanks to anyone who wants to help us speed star massacists out!
			John Nielsen
-- 
John Nielsen   jtn@moscom.com		{rit,tropix,ur-valhalla}!moscom!jtn