Madmatt,
Thanks for the ATI beta - it solved the problem. I do miss the translucent smoke, but compared to not playing at all, putting up with imperfect smoke graphics is a small price to pay.
Peter
To Barman -
Be careful when it comes to upgrading video. There is a weird driver problem that makes ATI Radeon 9000's (Apple's standard card for a while as well as a good midrange card) break the video in Combat Mission games. I don't know if this problem continues up into the 9200's and 9600's but it broke my heart when I realized that I couldn't play CM on my brand new tower.
One work around I'm going to try is installing a second graphics card (probably an ATI Rage) in a pci slot and switching my monitor over to that when I want to play. But it's annoying. To be totally safe, get a Nvidia card.