cmbb and cmbo and radeon 9800

[heretic]

i've had these two games for years running on 98. recently, i upgraded to xp with a radeon 9800 video card. when i start either game (cmbo has been updated, cmbb has not as yet), i get a dialog box with options for scan rate settings at res 800X600. it cycles through several options. no matter which option i select, the lower half of the control panel is offscreen. any suggestions?

[edit] also, cmbo no longer asks for a scan rate/resolution but has settled into an unworkable one. i removed and reinstalled but it still does this.

[Schrullenhaft]

What Catalyst drivers are you using under WinXP ? What resolution do you run your desktop at and at what vertical refresh rate ?

The resolution selection process starts at your current desktop resolution, but at the highest vertical refresh rate that is available to your videocard (which may be beyond your monitor's capability to display). The selections offered after that should differ in only a lower vertical refresh rate, but the same resolution. Eventually when you reach 60Hz vertical refresh the next offering will be at the next lower resolution, but again at the highest vertical refresh rate offered by the videocard at that resolution.

CMBB and CMAK both require a minimum resolution of 800x600 to see the entire screen. What will usually get truncated is the lower control panel if 640x480 is run. Ideally 640x480 resolutions shouldn't be offered by CMBB and CMAK, but they are (it may be an unavoidable programming limitation). Later patches of CMBB (and possibly CMAK 1.0) will give you an error message once you try to start the game with a 640x480 resolution. However I believe that the original version 1.0 of CMBB (and maybe later) would still attempt to run with a 640x480 screen, but as you've seen, with the control panel truncated. You need to make sure that you don't pick any resolutions below 800x600 for CMBB and I believe that should solve the issue.

For CMBO I believe you can just delete the Prefs file and select another resolution. Remember what I mentioned above, it's possible that you may be initially offered vertical refresh rates that your monitor can't handle, resulting in a scrambled screen. Do not press any keys yet and just wait awhile for CM to automatically offer a lower vertical refresh rate (and at that point the resolution selection screen should be legible).

[heretic]

thank you. your post gave me enough info to get it running right. i needed to delete the prefs file to have another shot at it and i skipped down to 800x600 at 75 hz and it worked.