Thomas Davie

For what it's worth, I never had this problem on a 'pure' Windows 98 setup. Then, I buggered thigns by installing Windows 2000 and not deleting all 16 bit drivers. I had screen flicker. Then,I trashed everything that was 16 bit and problem gone (eh, along with a hell of a lot of other software). I might be able to help if you could tell me; a) what size/type monitor you have what is it's maximum listed refresh rate c) what version of Windoze you're running d) what version of directX e) whether or not you have the latest current drivers. Am I correct in understanding that you've got 2 video display cards? If so, you're using the Voodoo as the primary display, right? Email me if you need more help. Tom

After upgrading to Windows 2000, I'm not playing much of anything Anything that writes directly to hardware (Dos), or is not fully compliant with DirectX 7 and it's a no go. But, on the Mac side of things, I'm still playing TetrisMax. My *big* mistakes was upgrading to NTFS rather than just FAT32. C'est la vie. Tom

Ed, fra be it from me to keep Bill from earning a dollar But here's what I had to do to get my soundcard working under W2000 (but not Dos ). 1) Reboot my comp, enter Bios and disable plug and play OS 2) Finish the boot process with my 'rescue' CD from Hewlett Packard installed. 3) Ignore 'reinstall software', and drill down through many directories to NT drivers. 4) Install an NT driver for my soundcard. That got sound working in Windows. I managed to do that by searching for rockwell+soundcard on Altavista plus visiting the HP home page. I expect that with a better soundcard, I'd not have to do that, but would still have problems under Dos. Who knows. Specifically, here are the positives I've noticed in 2 days; 1) Transfer rates for a Lan City personal modem (cable) have increased about 25%. 2) Zero crashes. 3) System boots and shuts down quicker. 4) Programs open quicker. Pretty crappy tradeoff if you ask me, but then I do get the feeling that this is nto aimed at the home user. I don't know the price in the States, but in Canada about $250 seems to be the going price. Email me if you want any more specifics, since I'm in too deep now to back out Tom

Ed, I can't answer your question. I've been going to the same bookstore and buying computer stuff for approx 20 years, hence the reason I got into the W2000 beta program. Now, I should have mentioned that Office 2000 (which is the only application on my home PC that I MUST run) works flawlessly. But as far as an impending marketing blitz on MS's part....just a guess, but yes, I'd say that W2000 will be marketed as a 'home' OS. This is hypothetical, but all of the games that require Dos on my end of things use setsound.exe to configure the soundcard. During the upgrade process on my computer, W2000 explicitly stated that my soundcard would not work under legacy/Dos conditions. And I know that some Dos game have to have the sound configured 'just so' or they don't work at all. I figure on this Friday, I'm gonna buy a newer soundcard and test things out. Tom

Don't feel too good; I own several Macs as well But in all seriousness, there are several things about W2000 I like, and several more that I hate. I'm just po'd that none of my Steel Panthers games work, and am seriously considering picking up a 486 tomorrow just so I can play them. But CM does run flawlessly so far, and with no graphic glitches that I saw on W98. Time will tell. Tom

The bookstore at the university where I work participated in the beta program for Windows 2000. I had a chance to get a free copy, so I did. End result (and this is the warning); 1) NO Dos games work. 2) Nothing by Talonsoft works. 3) Few W95/98 specific games do work, and this is the list of what I have/own that does; -Combat Mission Beta Demo -Heroes of Might and Magic 3 -Starfleet Command -Close Combat 1,2 and 3 I decided I'd buy Partition Magic, make a 2 Gb partition, and reinstall Windows 98 on *that* partition. Well, Partition Magic does not work on Windows 2000 I then thought 'The hell with it, I'll reinstall Windows 98'. I decided just to recover Windows 98 rather than format and reinstall, since I was too damn lazy to backup my harddrive to 20 cd's. Windows 2000 resisted reinstalling Windows 98, so I ended up with a corrupted hard drive that would not boot either OS. I had reboot from the Windows 2000 CD, and completely reinstall Windows 2000, losing all of my registry settings for every piece of software I have. Final comment: Gosh Windows 2000 is stable and fast. That's about it Tom

Rex, bitch; you be trippin. You on da pipe, right? Tom

Leshawn; have you ever considered having one of your nigga's busting a cap in your ass? No offense of course. Tom

Steve; please lock this thread. Thank you. Tom

I'm aware that it will likely not be included in the initial release for the game, and will probably be provided as a downloadable patch. Fair nuff. But, my question is; will a 3rd demo with the networking code included be released or will a patch that will include tcp/ip play into the gold demo be made available? In other words, will I have a chance to assess h2h play prior to purchase? Thanks Tom

I'm well aware that the overwhelming sentiment is 'Ship now' if implementing tcp/ip means a delay. I don't have a problem with this. I'm also aware that what we (and I)have been playing with since October 28th is the beta demo. Again, no problem. My question (Steve?) is will I get a chance to assess tcp/ip prior to a prospective purchase? Tom

You can correct me if I'm wrong (please?), but unless the tcp/ip networking code is included before the program goes gold, we won't have a chance to evaluate this portion of the game prior to purchase. Unless of course *another* demo is released when the tcp/ip code is finished. Tom

Looks interesting, but I bet it isn't turn based I'll pass on it thanks. Tom

January- Steel Panthers: World At War ?- Point Of Attack 2 Fall- War In Russian remake. But Road To Moscow, well....I'll bet ya it's not gonna be out in 2000 Tom

I know that some of the displays are messed up (and yup, am aware that Battlefront is aware), but am curious as to what kind of mess ups in screen displays that people are seeing....it might help resolve the problem. Who knows. I'm using Internet Explorer 5.00.2314.1003 under Windows 98 release update 1 1) No update indicators for new messages; everything remains yellow regardless. 2)Message dates are all 00-10-10 3)Minute indicators for message times go up to at least 93. 4) These 'bugs' only seem to affect messages written after the turn of the clock on *THIS* server running the web board software, since messages from December 31/99 that were unread prior to my new years debauchery remained red Just a guess, and it might not help, but there was my report. Tom

Eh, if it is politically correct to have statistically valid displays of ethnic troops in the game, then maybe we shouldn't have a wargame? After all, when we play the game, we might be induced to go out killing people in our workplaces, schools and so forth. And we might as well remove the swastikas from the game too. Said VERY tongue in cheek. Hell, I'm a member of a non visible minority and I milk it for all the $ I can. Tom

Not bad Captn; I got kicked out of school at the age of 13 for throwing eggs at the school president. Tom

I want range attenuation charts for all weapons within the game. If they will not be provided, I understand. In that case, I offer to put up on a web site range attenuation charts for armour piercing and anti personnel weapons. Email me for any information. I'll also tell you how to construct such charts yourself. It's simple. Tom

My quantum leap computer games: 1) Steel Panthers (it's the only game that was actually cursed by name by my ex) 2) Warlords 2 (we actually had a game going for over 2 momnths in a lab I used to work at where people would make their moves in between experiments) That's about it really. Despite the fact that I consider myself a wargamer, there isn't anything else that does it for me as consistently as Warlords 2, which I've played on all my IBM's and Mac's (except ym Mac Plus). Tom

Group # 5 Fionn; 'Tom' or other people like him who wander around in an aimless daze and feel it rather pointless or useless to defend other people or don't feel it will particularly accomplish anything In all seriousness though Fionn, you can not categorize people quite as easily as that. I *know* who matters with regard to this game. Some I'm in email contact with. Others, I've sparred with good naturedly on this board or on Usenet. I just don't have the energy to blast into someone for any reason other than self defense. Even then it accomplishes little. Tom

Fionn; it's not a case of not wanting to get involved....for myself it's a case of conducting myself according to certain standards of behaviour because I am expounding my viewpoints on a piece of private property, and *I must* behave in accordance with the rules. But that having been said, I quite frequently feel like telling certain people here to 'have sex and travel'. It's also not a case of cowardice; it's merely a desire of not wanting to scrape something distasteful from the bottom of my shoe. Peace out. Tom

Apparently Steve, on certain systems running Windows 98, Java applets can be hidden inside of display screen fonts, and run on systems that have an ActiveX desktop set up. Mind you, this is only on DOS boxes, and only with True Type fonts. When W98 boots up, screen fonts are read into main memory space, and the compressed applet decompresses and runs. Strictly speaking, it is not a virus, but it can be very damaging to systems that are active at the turn of the millenium. The trouble of course being that most W98 users have never bothered to switch to Adobe fonts and thus are left vulnerable to this completely undocumented Y2K related problem. Disclaimer: This is a joke, and I'm only trying to drive up the price of Adobe stock. Tom

No; Combat Mission is not Y2K compliant. I just received an urgent email indicating that certain True Type Fonts resident within the game will become garbled after midnight on December 31rst, rendering on screen text next to useless. Apparently, a major portion of the time that is now being used to finish the game is being utilized to convert everything over to Adobe fonts. This is quite a widespread problem, and is affecting far more than just this game. Now, if you believe this, then I have a certain bridge for sale....sight unseen. Tom

DavidH: A well thought out post. Eloquent and to the point. I however will wait and see. Obviously it can be, and is the choice of others to voice with their credit cards up front. I want to see how the tcp/ip play is implemented. To be honest though, I don't know if I'll get the chance because I doubt that a second 'gold' demo with tcp/ip playability will be released. But regardless, the beta demo represents something amazing. For myself, it really boils down to the fact that I've been burnt too many times in the past to bother even trying again. No, I likely will not get burnt by pre ordering, but I can guarantee that I will not get burnt by waiting. Regards Tom

Oh, I know that snow on slopes makes driving tricky in reality (I do live in Canada ), just wondered if it did in the game as well, and it's nice to hear that it does. Thanks for the replies. Tom