I thought I had sent this message to Support but if not then I should perhaps tell you something about what happened.
I wanted to upgrade my video card to a real 3D DirectX 4 meg DRAM card. I bought the product at Sams and was not aware that it was not a DirectX product but rather a DirectX compatible, which is unacceptable for me since I test computer products and write product and software reviews. It is critical that I am able to test hardware that uses the software that I am testing. If you get my meaning. Yet no where on the outside of the box did it say that it was not a DirectX product. Not until I opened the box and pulled out the paper did I realize this video card was not what I was looking for.
If companies like yourself would please put this information on the outside of the box somewhere, large enough that half blind old men without their glasses could read it, that would be helpful.
Even so I decided to go ahead and test your video card so my wife and I tried to get it to work on that Saturday without luck. The screen came up with white text, went to red text then the screen went dark blue with black text which I found almost impossible to read. The drivers would not install because I was getting an error message that said I had to be in 256 color mode, yet nothing I could do would work because my settings only offered me 16 colors at that point. The software would not install on my computer because of this.
I downloaded the new drivers from your web site and tried them. The first set acted like they were going to install but no change on the screen or the settings.
We gave up and started fresh on Sunday and worked with it for awhile but the moment I clicked on the second set of drivers my computer failed and the entire operating system was wiped out.
I put the old working video card back in my computer.
I worked for two full days trying to restore a backup tape that was two weeks old, all the while kicking myself for ever even trying to use the Sierra video card. I waited to hear from you until 6 PM monday when my wife said "enough is enough" and took the video card back to Sams.
Evidently I sent my message asking for help to the wrong place at Sierra.
On that Monday however I took the video card to my team of computer experts who tested the card with DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 on two or three different computers and they could not find anything wrong with the video card. It worked, but they could not for the life of them tell me why it would not work in my computer.
Recently I replaced the mother board in this computer to a TX Pro and moved that mother board on to another computer. At that moment the video card in it also failed. It was a Number 9 GXE-64 video card that had been working fine until that time. This lead me to suspect there was something about the mother board that was incompatible with the video cards. I even tried the PCI video card in every slot but the results was the same, Picaso colors and nothing I could do to correct it. Then I switched the video cards between the computer putting the original video card, a Reveal Speed Cat VC-800 back in that mother board and putting the Number 9 card back in this new mother board. This corrected the problem.
I called the Number 9 tech help people and they said I need to update the Bios program in that mother board and that should correct the problem.
The mother board is an Intel, with the Intel 2 chip set on it. It uses a flash ROM on the mother board. I am trying to find out what the exact program is that is on that chip so I can make a record of it.
I am reporting these things to you for your records should you encounter this problem in the future.
I only wish you would have had someone on line on the weekends. That's when "normal" people upgrade their computers and that's the most important time for you to have someone in Tech. answering the phones. So I still blame Sierra for all the trouble that trying to use your video card cost me.
Thank you.
Bryon Smith
Director Independent Software Consultants