Schrullenhaft

It looks like your DirectX sound driver is crashing (Direct Sound). I would suggest running Scandisk on your system, reinstalling DirectX 7.0a and then reinstalling the latest Aureal 2.0 sound drivers: http://support.a3d.com/downloads/index.htm Download the w9x2048_NODEMO.zip file (about 11Mb) This website has some FAQs, etc. about Aureal Vortex cards: http://www.vortexofsound.com/techhelp/helpv2-02.htm After reinstalling DirectX 7.0a you may want to reinstall your video drivers just to avoid the possibility of problems. This is the Elsa website and you'll have to navigate to get to the Elsa Erasor X drivers: http://www.elsa.com/AMERICA/WELCOME.HTM [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-24-2000).]

Most motherboards (though newer ones no longer require jumpers) configure themselves for supporting a CPU with jumpers. These jumper combinations tell the motherboard what voltage, frequency and multiplier to use for a certain CPU. These settings are often unique to each motherboard. If you have a manual for your motherboard (or system if you got a name-brand one) it should hopefully have instructions on setting the jumpers to support your CPU (these may be switches instead of jumpers). That is a good jump in CPU speed from 200Mhz to 450Mhz. Your motherboard may not specifically support your new CPU. The AMD K6-2 450 uses a "front side bus" of 100Mhz (your 200Mhz used a 66Mhz "fsb"). Your board may not support this frequency. Also your new CPU may require a lower voltage than your old one (1.9 - 2.2V, I can't remember). This information is often printed on the top of the AMD CPUs (voltage and frequency). So basically your motherboard would possibly need to support a lower voltage, a 100Mhz bus speed ("fsb") and have a "clock multiplier" of 4.5X. Without these settings you probably won't get much more out of your CPU than what your previous 200Mhz was doing. There is also the possibility that if your motherboard doesn't support your CPU that you may damage it if the voltage is too high. Also there may be the matter of updating your BIOS, which leads into the possiblity of different revisions of your board. Sometimes a manufacturer may support certain CPUs and features with a certain revision of the board. Previous revisions usually can't be modified to do the same thing (in other words you would need a new motherboard). The other remaining caveat here is that if you run your motherboard at 100Mhz "fsb", then you need "100Mhz DIMMs". You may current only have 66Mhz SIMMs or DIMMs. To reliably run at 100Mhz FSB you need memory certified to run at that speed (which basically only comes in 168-pin DIMMs, 72-pin SIMMs just don't support 100Mhz reliably). So your upgrade may require a few more bucks to be spent in order to get the speed increase that you were looking for.

What "monitor" do you have defined in your Display control panel ? Sometimes the driver will limit its resolution based on the monitor you have installed on your system (via .inf file settings). You may want to delete your "monitor" (but make note of what model it is) from the Device Manager in the System control panel. On reboot it may redetect your monitor. If not then go select the specific model of your monitor in the Display control panel or as a default select "Standard VGA 1024 x 768". Now see if your resolution slider will work. If not then you are probably going to have to do an uninstall/reinstall of your video drivers and possibly DirectX. There is also the possibility that your latest drivers require DirectX 7.x. If you have Windows 98SE and you haven't installed DirectX yourself, then you may be running v. 6.1 (v. 5.0 for the first edition of Windows 98). If you do reinstall DirectX, then install your newest video drivers AFTER you install DirectX. If things still aren't working then we will need to get a bit deeper in removing some of your previous drivers.

Same here too Matt. Netscape doesn't like your site (4.61). Ahhh... the joys of coding a website...

The A3D-based sound cards should be good. Some of the newer cards out have more voices (128 +), but I'm not sure how much of a difference that may make in CM. The question is are you happy with the sound you are getting in the Gold demo ? If so, then you may be fine for sound (the Gold demo uses 22kHz samples, while the Full version is using 44kHz samples). The full version will have more sounds and ambient sounds which your card should handle. If you do desire to upgrade then the Creative SoundBlaster Live series should do an excellent job (they are PCI cards, which your current sound card is probably too). The retail "Live X-Gamer" should be fine. Most of the differences in the retail versions are the software that is bundled with each card (though the "Platinum" has some extra connectors).

KIA - Do you know what ROM revision and driver version you have for your G400 ? This info MAY help GhostOne and others with the G400. I wonder if there are any Direct 3D settings that can be changed to support the transparencies any better. Most of the control panels don't offer much in the way of tuning such settings.

Ugh... I was afraid that was the case. I had the feeling that the shipping was taking a bit longer to get out of the warehouse than was estimated. Oh well, it won't kill me. Especially considering that I'm up to asses and elbows in a system transition at work. I have NO idea what kind of pain I'm in for... Thanks for the update Steve it really is appreciated, even if it wasn't what we all wanted to hear.

MantaRay - Wayne doesn't necessarily have an AGP port. His SiS 530 is a video controller built into the southbridge (?) of his chipset. I believe it uses a shared memory scheme where it gets its frame-buffer memory from the system memory. Depending on the board mfg. they may have decided to save a buck and not put in an AGP slot because they assume that the customer will be using the built in video ("value" oriented board design). Wayne - you need to check the manual of your motherboard (if you have it) and see if it mentions if you have an AGP SLOT (it will probably tell you that you have "AGP video", but that isn't what we're looking for here). If you don't have the manual, then you'll need to open up your case and look inside. An AGP slot will usually be brown in color and will be further away from the back of the computer than the PCI slots (which are often white in color). It will usually be the slot that is closest to your CPU. Whether you have an AGP slot or not will really affect what video card choices you have. Most of the current high-end cards are AGP, though some manufacturers are still making an occasional PCI video card, but not too often. By the way. Here are the latest drivers for the SiS 530. They're DirectX 7.0 compatible (v. 1.07). There are eight files that you need to download (get the right set for whichever version of Windows you're running) and copy into one directory. You'll need to extract each of the files (they're all self-extracting archives) and then run the setup program that gets extracted from the first one. SiS 530: http://www.sis.com.tw/support/download/530.htm [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-21-2000).]

Greg, I think you're being serreptitiously punished by the United States Postal Service. They're withholding your copy of CM because they know that you want it. Were you ever mean to a postal person/drone ? [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-20-2000).]

The latest "reference" driver from 3dfx for the Voodoo Banshee is dated Feb. 9, 2000. It's version 1.04.00. To be honest I don't know if will address the issue of using transparencies for smoke/explosion graphics. To my knowledge it doesn't. Unfortunately I don't expect 3dfx to be updating this driver any time soon. 3dfx Banshee reference driver: http://www.3dfxgamers.com/drivers/voodoo_banshee/voodoo_banshee_win9x_new.stm

Wayne - I think one limitation you are going to run into with your current motherboard is that you more than likely will not have an AGP slot. I could be wrong, in which case Hemo2's or DrD's advice should work (you may want something less expensive though). If you have the money then the 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 PCI would probably be a good bet, but it will probably retail for just under US$300 (and it isn't available right now - just preorders). Being on a budget and requiring PCI I would suggest either a video card based on a NVidia TNT/TNT2 (in PCI) or an ATI Xpert 128 PCI 16Mb going for about US$80 (here's ATI's on-line store http://www.shopati.com/searchresults.asp?dept_id=1 ). Some people have had problems with the ATI drivers, so it is a bit hard to recommend something that is going to be absolutely problem-free given your system restrictions. [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-20-2000).]

I wouldn't think that there is much of a difference in the requirements between the Gold Demo and the Full version. The only difference would be that larger scenarios are going to play slower. Did you do a "FULL" install of the game (which requires over 300Mb) ? If not, then you will probably get CD accesses during your playback (GhostOne mentioned this). As for the "off key" or "lines of color" in one of the setup panels... I'm not sure what would be causing this. Maybe your video driver isn't cooperating with a certain graphic file. If you want to share any further details on your system in the CM-Tech section, then some people here may be able to offer some suggestions.

There have been some rumblings regarding the Voodoo 5 drivers and CM. I believe some people have had your problem (and some haven't), but I don't know if they've found a solution yet or not. Some of the posts: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/005920.html http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/005475-2.html This may be an issue between your mouse drivers and the Voodoo 5 drivers (though you may not see the same glitch in other games). You may want to investigate any updates to your mouse driver if you haven't already. If you already have the latest drivers, then you may want to uninstall them and go with the Microsoft generic ones (that come with your OS CD). You'll lose any mouse software features, but you may get rid of the "mouse droppings".

Great job MadMatt and KwazyDog on MDMP-1. Thanks for your time on the mods. MadMatt - couple of questions on your new GeForce 64Mb... how's the speed and image compared to your previous TNT2 Ultra, especially with the 4X FSAA ? Is the 4X FSAA worth the speed hit ? Would you rate your new card a worthwhile upgrade or is the difference minimal (I know... a bit of a subjective question there) ?

I'm pretty sure you can take your pick. The only problem will be identifying the textures (on the PC they're a billion separate .bmp files). So you could take the Panther from CCJ and the Jagdpanther from MDMP-1, etc. If there is any installer that may make things a bit more complex, but I don't think that there will be.

Sorry to say, but I believe that is a known issue. CM seems to have a problem with the Voodoo's and their RAVE extensions. The following topics (found in the main forum) give a couple of details on this. Until 3dfx updates their RAVE libraries to be more compatible with CM, you are going to have to probably play in "software rendering" mode. http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/004251.html http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/004292.html http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/004687.html I believe you will need to disable both your 3dfx GLIDE and RAVE extensions and restart. Delete your prefs file in the CM folder (that is where I think it is on a Mac). Run CM and see if it gives you the black screen with the resolutions. Hopefully you will get something at this point. I'd suggest running at a resolution lower than 1024 x 768. If playing CM is a priority for you, then you may want to invest in an ATI-based video card. I'm not sure how many models are available on the Mac, but this is the video chipset that Apple has standardized on (to some extent) with their models that have on-board video.

Thanks Crapgame. Your gratitude is appreciated. I'm currently a "systems analyst" doing database administration on a Sun platform. I've done a lot of work w/ PCs and Macs over the years, but I forget most of the details half of the time. I'm constantly amazed by how much people know here. I figure that helping with some of the problems is the best way I can contribute to this forum. My knowledge of military hardware, tactics, history and physics is not up to par of a good number of people on this forum. If you're doing network administration on top of your normal duties, then I really have empathy for you. Hopefully the extra effort is paying off for you in some way. Sosabowski - if you decide to get another video card from your "system builder/friend" I would suggest trying to get one with 8 or 16Mb (if you can afford the difference). This will help you with the large number of textures in the game and upcoming mods. [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-18-2000).]

If you want the TCP/IP patch, it will probably be even longer than that. Depending on the business guesses that BTS has made, their second run may have "v. 1.02" patch with the TCP/IP support. If demand is greater than BTS has expected it may have to wait 'til the third or later pressing.

ARCHANGEL - do you have two cards for your video or just one ? The Voodoo 2 based cards provide 3D features only. Your system is dependant on another card to provide your actual 2D/day to day video. If you have only one card then you may have the Creative Blaster Banshee. This is the Creative site with the latest drivers for the Creative Voodoo2: http://www.creative.com/support/files/download.asp?prod=db_voo&OS=Win95®=0&select=Get+Files I just thought of something here. If you actually have a Voodoo 2 you may need a cable that hooks up externally between your video card and your Voodoo card. I believe that the monitor actually hooks up to the Voodoo 2 and a video cable hooks up from your main video card's output over to the second connector on the Voodoo card. Check to see if this cable is hooked up. If not you may need to call Computer Renaissance to see if they took off the cable and forgot to put it back on.

Sosabowski - You are still seeing the screen corruption when you load CM ? Looks like you have a Jaton video card based on the Trident 9850. This video card (as you probably already know) won't support transparencies. According to Trident this video chip doesn't support DirectX 6.x in hardware - in other words the new features in DirectX 6 & 7 will have to be software rendered. To install the driver you'll need a zip extracting program (like WinZip). Open up the file and extract it to a directory you'll remember (preferably one you've just created with Explorer - call it "trident"). When you've unzipped the file go to Control Panel > System control panel > Device Manager tab > click on the plus next to or double click on the Display Adapter entry > highlight your video card and press the Properties button > goto the Driver tab and click on the Update Driver button. Click the Next button and select "Display list...". Click on the "Have Disk" button and point it to the "trident" directory. Hopefully it should be fairly automatic from here. If this driver doesn't solve your problem you can download the latest from Trident at: http://www.tridentmicro.com/videographic_comms/html/drivers/3dimage_9850.htm The driver is about two years old, but it is a bit newer than the Jaton one. I don't know how much an improvement Jaton may have made on the driver, but I wouldn't assume it has been much, so the Trident driver may be a better bet to fix your problem, but try the Jaton one first.

Are you using a serial (9 pins), PS/2 (4 pins in a small circle) or USB mouse (rectangular connector) ? If you're going to switch mice you may want to uninstall any drivers for previous mice. Uninstalling can be done from either the Control Panel > Add, Remove Softare control panel or from an uninstaller provided with the drivers (which may be an icon in your Start Menu > Progams > "whatever mouse folder"). I'd suggest going to Control Panel > System control panel > Device Manager tab and checking out your mouse section. See if you have any yellow circles with an exclamation point in them. These are drivers that aren't running a device or a device that doesn't have drivers OR a device that is just having a problem. You can possibly highlight every mouse listed here (one at a time) and click the Remove button or press the Delete key on your keyboard to get rid of it. One of these devices is going to be your current mouse driver, so your mouse will stop working at some point when you are deleting these (you will now have to use the keyboard to manuver around Windows). From here you will need to reboot the computer and see if it detects your new mouse. You will now need either the Windows 9x CD, your mouse drivers CD/diskette or know what directory on your hard drive for either (or it just may install automatically with little intervention from you). Try to load up CM now and see if the problem duplicates itself still. If it does then you may have a conflict between the mouse driver and the video driver. Sometimes this can be fixed by adjusting a setting for the video drivers (which usually involves losing some acceleration) or updating either/both mouse and video drivers. If you have a particular brand of mouse (your Logitech and MS Intellimouse) then you will need to find the specific upgraded driver for that model. Logitech has updated their drivers to fix some incompatibilities with some displays. MantaRay pointed out that he has newer MS drivers, though they may not address your issue (i'm using a PS/2 Intellimouse and I'm not having any problems). If none of this works then you either have a more deep-rooted problem with your drivers (which may be fixed with more tweaking and tinkering with the system) or there remains a driver incompatibility in your system which you will be unable to change until newer drivers resolve the issue. If you have tried these steps and you're still having problems, then let us know and we can step you through some more thorough processes to attempt to fix the issue. [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-17-2000).]

Sounds like G4A has a point. Skimming Villagetronic's website seems to indicate that the MP 540 + 3D Overdrive supports Glide-based games (it's probably a 3dfx chip). You probably have the Glide libraries in your extensions folder (they come with the 3D Overdrive). CM is a RAVE based game. It seems as if Villagetronic is in the process of combinig their drivers, but I don't know if they've finished or not. You will probably want the "Village RAVE" in your extensions folder (or possibly the "VT 3D RAVE Accelerator"). Villagetronic seems to have a beta GLIDE driver up, but I don't know how well it works. You will only need it if you want to run GLIDE-based games. But look for the GLIDE library extension G4A mentioned and disable it.

As far as I can tell DirectX 7.x is slower than v. 6.x. A bit of unoptimized code from Microsoft.... an unwanted trade-off for more features. More memory will ALMOST always help. And as Danno said - the tweaking tips at tweak3d.net should help things a little. I'm not sure if PowerStrip will work for you, but it may have an overclocking feature that might work with your video card. You may want to search around for some overclocking utilities that support your video card/video chip. Though you may not be successful at getting more performance by overclocking (very dependant on the quality of your video card's chip and memory).

I can't remember much from my Mac support days.... so, uh.. these will be pretty generic attempts at a solution. What OS are you running ? If you're running something earlier than 9.0x you will probably need to install Game/Soundsprockets if you haven't already (though I wouldn't imagine that would be causing the "type 2" error). What display adapter do you have; are you just running off of the built-in video ? You may want to reduce the number of extensions and control panels you are loading up to see if this helps any. I would initially disable down to the bare minimum necessary for your hardware, etc. (scsi, video & sound, etc.). You MAY have a corrupt installation. You might need to delete CM and reinstall. As a last resort it may be necessary to re-download the file.

Wayne - the full version of CM should still work on your computer. However the scenarios that have more units (more AFVs, etc.) are going to "pan" slower with the camera. In other words you may see a bit more "jerkiness" to the video with the larger scenarios. At least that is my guess.