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StarFleet Captain

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Posts posted by StarFleet Captain

  1. Originally posted by wwb_99:

    Screw the bridges. Give me roads in brush, roads with walls, streams, gullies and high walls first.

    WWB

    Yes, as much as I hate to admit it,that would be nice. But then again aren't all graphics in the CM engine abstracted?

    Also, now that I've got the idea, what about trenches?

  2. About XP, I considered upgrading to it, but the head tech at my good ol' computer shop said that XP is a real bugger with device drivers. He said that if you load the wrong drivers, it basically trashes the operating system and a reformat and reinstall is almost necessary. So with that I went ahead and stuck with good ol' Win98 SE.

  3. Originally posted by JMcGuire:

    </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by StarFleet Captain:

    Is there some internal battery that holds this information?

    Yes, it's called the CMOS battery. It's a little round battery like wrist watches use. (And I hate to say it again, but if your shop missed THAT one...)</font>
  4. Originally posted by JMcGuire:

    I hear you, but I still disagree. It's trivial to determine that a mobo has on-board audio. I've built MANY machines, always from scratch, and basically a trained monkey could determine whether a mobo has on-board audio.

    Well, actually I think they did. Because they would have have to because they disabled it as I had my old SBLive! that they installed.

    Also, the A7V-333 isn't THAT new, it came out at the end of March. In motherboard terms that makes it almost middle-aged. smile.gif
    Well, OK, it's not brand new but close. ;)

    Also, pose these questions to your shop:

    1. Do you have a RAID array?

    Yes, I believe it does. It's got RAID ATA133.

    Since it sounds like you might not know a lot about computer hardware, I suspect the answer is No. RAID support adds expense to the cost of a mobo, and non-RAID versions are almost always available. If you don't know what RAID is, you almost certainly don't need it, so why did you pay for it? ...Asking them, not you. smile.gif
    Well now hold on there, my friend. I've had a home computer for the past 12 years now and I've seen my share of hardware. Now I'm no expert by all means, but when I'm buying upgrades, I ask a lot of questions. I make sure I know exactly what I'm getting.

    2. Are you using PC2700 DDR RAM?

    This is relatively fast memory. If you didn't ask for it, there's a good chance you're using PC2100, which is slightly slower and quite a bit cheaper. And if you're using PC2100 you might as well get the older and cheaper A7V-266e and save money all 'round.

    Yes, I'm using PC2100 because the distributor will not take back the PC2700 DIMMS at this time. You buy'em, they're yours, kind of thing. The shop didn't want to risk going with PC2700 at this time. Because I think they said they built a Athlon 2100+ XP system once with PC2700 and they were having problems with it. So I chose to go with the cheaper and more tried and tested 1800+.

    And now that I mention the A7V-266e, you should consider that the A7V-333 that you have isn't all that new since it's really just a faster version of the 266e.
    You mean get a slower board after I already have this one built and in use? No thanks.

    Again, I'd get a new shop.
    Can't do it. I live in a small town. They're the only really dedicated computer building shop in town. I've done business with them for the past year or so, and I've been pretty pleased with them.

    (BTW, if you had popping with the sound on your old mobo, most likely you had an IRQ conflict, and most likely it's the printer port. This was a well-known problem with older sound cards. Happily those kinds of problems mostly go away with new hardware.)
    Actually I should rephrase that. It was never really a popping sound as such, because I know what those sound like. I guess it was more like static at times or just speaker static. This on-board sound is crystal clear.

    [ July 21, 2002, 03:40 PM: Message edited by: StarFleet Captain ]

  5. From what I gather from the short time I've been here, that's been an on-going problem with some Nvidia drivers and CM. I've got the latest Nvidia drivers (Detonator 29.42), but I couldn't tell you if they work with CMBO because I don't have the game. (I'm waiting for CMBB, which comes out in mid-September). So you're not doing anything wrong probably, it's a Nvidia thing.

    [ July 21, 2002, 03:15 PM: Message edited by: StarFleet Captain ]

  6. Well'p, you're not gonna believe this. It was my damned Dialer that the "InstallShield" for Shockwave was detecting. I disconnected my connection. Ran the installer again, and it got through the InstallShield like a champ. But then of course, I had to reconnect to download the rest of the plug-in. Everything's fine now. I guess chalk that up as a lesson learned for this new set-up I have.

    I'm going to try that for a few others I've had trouble with and see if that helps.

    Guess now I gotta load up one of those Interactive DVDs and reload that player/browser. I think it was my SW:EpI disc that I installed it off of.

  7. One thing I thought of this morning was that I have one of those DVD-ROM "Interactive" viewers installed which doubles as a web-browswer when appropriate for DVDs. I'm wondering if the Shockwave installer is detecting this one as being the open browswer.

    Also, I had downloaded the installer into a C:\Downloads so I had to open up "My Computer" which in a way is a browser in itself, right, so I tried copying the installer to the Desktop and trying it from there. This time, it acted like it wanted to start to install and ran through what looked like an install into C:\Windows\System or some such, but then it kicked back out with the same message about an open browser.

    If all else fails, I'm going to temporarily uninstall the Interactive DVD viewer and see if that helps.

    Before this reformat and all I had Netscape 6.1 and I never had this problem. So there's gotta be something new here of which I'm not aware of. However, IIRC, I installed the Quicktime package before I installed the Interactive DVD viewer. So that may explain why I'm having the problem now.

  8. Hi again, as some of you may know, especially Schrullenhaft (sp?) that I just had a new system and clean install, and I'm starting fresh.

    Now one of the first things I did was download Netscape 6.2.3 and installed it. The next thing I did was download and installed Quicktime 5 Pro using a registration key from previous installs. Installed all Quicktime plug-ins and it all worked fine.

    Now, however, I can't get any new plug-ins to install because they keep saying either that the installer can't find the plug-in directory or that there's a browser still open. Netscape 6.2.3 has this QuickLaunch program that opens up in the systray on bootup and I figured that it's still reading that as an open browser. So I close it down through the recommended shutdown method. I also tried running msconfig and disabling the launcher from the Startup tab, but nothing seems to work.

    I'm trying to install Shockwave Player and Adobe Acrobat 5.0. I got Acrobat 5 to install, but the plug-in didn't install as when the installer got to that point, it flashed a quick window about the plug-in, but I couldn't read it.

    I also tried installing a plug-in for an on-line virus checker and it told me it couldn't find the plug-in directory even after I pointed directly to it.

    Any help would be seriously appreciated.

  9. Originally posted by JMcGuire:

    If your shop didn't know you had on-board sound, you DEFINITELY need a new shop...

    Being that's a brand new, top-of-the-line motherboard, they've only had two of them in. Mine and some other guy who built his own with it. So they aren't, or shall I say, weren't all that familiar with it yet. But they are now...after they had time to read the manual.

    Besides, the on-board sound actually sounds a lot better than my old soundcard. Clearer sound. No popping, etc. DVD sound is much better. Even in just 2-speaker mode the simulated 3D sound is awesome. This'll save me from having to buy a new soundcard. I just need to find me a good set of 5.1 speakers.

  10. Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

    I suggest downloading and installing the VIA 4-in-1 4.40 Drivers. These are necessary for your chipset. The shop may have installed them, but maybe not.

    The ASUS mobo CD came with those on it.

    But what's funny here is that it doesn't seem to want to keep the Time & Date settings between shutdowns. I booted up this morning and it had set itself back to December 31, 2001 while asking me about Daylight Savings Time at boot-up.

    Is there some internal battery that holds this information?

  11. From some previews I've seen it appears that CMBB is as good, if not better than a fully modded CMBO. So I'm wondering if the mod artists will start working on mods right away or will the stock graphics last longer for this game?

    Also, will winterized textures be included with CMBB as I've learned that they weren't with CMBO?

    [ July 20, 2002, 01:35 PM: Message edited by: StarFleet Captain ]

  12. I just had to do a forced upgrade (due to a bad motherboard) from a ASUS A7V133 w/ a 1.2 Ghz Athon w/ 256MB PC-133 SDRAM to a ASUS A7V333 w/ a 1800+ XP Athlon w/ 256MB PC2100 DDRRAM. The new CPU actually runs at 1.533 GHz, but it's equivalent to a 1.8 Ghz P4.

    Unfortunately I still had to keep my 64MB GF2, because I couldn't afford an additional $375 128MB G4 Ti4600. But later if I find that CMBB will run better with a better video card, I'll go ahead with the G4. But right now, that additional $375 on the ol' credit card would be a bit too much.

    Oh, BTW, I only paid about $500 for the CPU, mobo, and memory upgrade. And not only that, but I got a new 10x DVD-ROM drive and a new v.92 56K modem.

  13. Originally posted by fytinghellfish:

    Am I the only one that just noticed that this Captain Stransky had an Email address that is shared by the forum name of the only person to stick up for him in that whole thread, GAZ NZ? Sneaky, cheeky little bugger.

    Did anybody catch onto this before? Am I being two years too slow?

    [Edit:Oops, nevermind. I guess if I would have taken the time to read the linked-to thread, I would have known.]

    But anyway, thanks for the clarification on the "sumfink" deal. Especially about the German translation story. That was interesting.

    [ July 19, 2002, 04:20 PM: Message edited by: StarFleet Captain ]

  14. I would also gather that why CM can't be real time is that the huge 3D map itself. It would be nearly impossible to effectively give "sensable" and "sound" orders to all of your units in a real time fashion all over the battlefield.

    Being that while playing any strategy game, you, the player, are the only one in command of the troops which in it of itself is unrealistic, because in real life you would have many troops and units that could think for themselves and then of course, act on their own in an intelligent manner. By limiting the "virtual commander" to just you, in real-time, you will get an very un-realistic battle outcome.

    For example, in some of my RTS games, I wished I could stop and set up more precise and sensable tactics, but they just end up being the famous "tank-rushes". Where's the fun in that?

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