Game freezes during Villars Bocage

[Tom Hainlin]

Hello!

First time on the bulletin board. First time attempting to play Combat Mission. Installed both game and patch 1.12. Set resolution to 1024x768. Villars-Bocage looked like a good place to learn. Attempted about two dozen times, game freezes each time. Cursor completely freezes. Alt-q, Alt-a, and Ctl/Atl/Del not effective. Only reset gets out of the game. Doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason, game freezes during different turns, taking different actions, sometimes planning actions, sometimes resolving them. Tried changing to 800x600 resolution, same result.

Here's what I'm running:

FIC SD-11 motherboard

AMI NC611 BIOS

AMD K7 500MHz

Crucial 128MB PC100 SDRAM

IBM 20GB Ultra ATA 66 HDD

Advansys Ultra Wide SCSI Adapter

Plextor Ultra Plex PX-40TW SCSI CD-ROM

Creative 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra

Diamond Monster Sound MX300

Netgear FA311 Fast Ethernet

Logitech PS2 Wireless Keyboard/Mouse

Windows 98 4.10.1998

DirectX 8.0

So far, I've updated the chipset drivers:

AMD Driver Pack 1.20

VIA 4-in-1 4.34 (AGP turbo mode)

Tried two different video drivers, one from Creative and one from Nvidia:

Creative 3db9xDrv_650

Nvidia Detonator XP v21.83

Last sound card driver update was 2/99, nothing I can do there.

Game looks interesting, brings back memories of hours of Squad Leader. Would really like to see if it can work on my system.

Sorry this is so long, but hopefully I've given enough info to provide clues as to what I need to try next.

Thanks!

Tom Hainlin

[Tom Hainlin]

After about four hours of sleep and half of a dozen cups of coffee, I had a chance to search the board more thoroughly for previous suggestions.

Unfortunately I'm at work and unable to test until later, but some things I see I did NOT try are:

1. Look for possible IRQ conflict between video/audio. Could be a problem, since a power spike from AT&T through the cable line blew out one of my expansion slots (along with the cable modem, network card, and several sectors of my hard drive as well as my TV - alas, a story for another day).

Hopefully the AMI BIOS allows for disabling of Plug and Play so I can leave the cards where they are and manually configure.

2. Do a complete uninstall of the Nvidia video drivers including a registry flush. Any thoughts on which drivers to reinstall, the Creative ones specifically for the board or the Nvidia Detonator?

3. Turn down the graphics effects. I hate to do this as I feel I have enough "horses" to run the game as is, at least in 800x600 if not in 1024x768.

Sorry about the previous incomplete post. I'll try #1 first, then #2 if necessary and #3 if I'm desperate and repost the conclusions.

Thanks,

Tom

[Wolfe]

Don't know if this applies to your system or not. I used to use a Diamond S90 sound card (Vortex 1 chip) and the game would lock up the system if there were a lot of animations going on (like snow or rain or lots of smoke). This happened regardless of the driver set used. I removed the sound card and use the onboard AC97. This fixed the problem, though sounds aren't as powerful (less bass) and sounds aren't as individually distinct, either. Hope to pick up a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz soon.

Hope that helps.

- Chris

[Tom Hainlin]

Alas, I still have the issue of freezing up during game play.

Following up on my previous comments, I examined #1 above. Here are the IRQ assignments:

00 System timer

01 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard

02 Programmable interrupt controller

03 SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus

04 Communications Port (COM1)

05 Monster Sound II Sound Blaster Pro Emulation

06 Standard Floppy Disk Controller

07 Printer Port (LPT1)

08 System CMOS/real time clock

09 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering

09 VIA VT83C572/VT82C586 PCI to USB Universal Host Controller

09 Monster Sound II Multifunction Parent

09 Monster Sound II PCI Audio

10 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering

10 Win9x AdvanSys Ultra Wide SCSI Adapter

11 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering

11 NETGEAR FA311 Fast Ethernet PCI Adapter

11 NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Ultra

12 Cordless9 (PS/2)

13 Numeric data processor

14 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller

14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)

15 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller

15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)

IRQ 11 is in use by both the video card and the network card. Maybe an issue if I'm playing on a LAN, but for single, hotseat, or PBM I should be okay on resources, no? If not, should I move the network card to free up the video and if so, to where? I suppose I could move it to IRQ 4 since I don't have use for a serial port. BTW, what is the SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus on IRQ 3?

IRQ 9 has both the sound card and the USB controller. I have no USB devices, so again that shouldn't present a resource conflict, correct?

Regarding #2, I uninstalled all previous video drivers, and did an .inf and a registry flush, reinstalled DirectX and the Nvidia Detonator drivers.

Regarding the nice reply, the Diamond sound card uses a Vortex2 chip and it would not surprise me in the least if that is the ultimate source of my problems. Anybody have an opinion on the best soundcard currently available? I have limited use for surround sound or audio editing capabilities. I have not enough room to support the former and not enough time to participate in the latter.

Comments and suggestions most appreciated.

Tom

[marclw]

At the outset, I got to say that I'm running CMBO on a Mac. But, I got to tell you that I had the same problems. It was incredibly frustrating! After trying just about everything (wasting several hours of my life), I found out that, if I turned off all ambient sounds, the number of freezeups was reduced significantly. So, now, all I hear are battle sounds and voices. Try it. I think you'll like it! It's not foolproof though; I still save my game routinely.

Marc

[Schrullenhaft]

According to FIC your 32Mb video card is a little too much for the AGP port. Since CMBO puts a heavy load on the video chip's 3D functions it is probably drawing more electrical current for your video card than other games or apps.

FIC's FAQ for the SD11:

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Q: When I use S3 Savage 4 Pro with the FIC mainboard, the display card gets hot in a short time, and then the system crashes. I can use windows, run other programs, but after a while the system crashes so, what should we do? Is there any solution to work S3 Savage4 Pro with the SD11 Mainboard and AMD-K7-650? (mail from Cyprus) (2000/7/4)

A: Do not use any 32MB on board AGP devices since they draw more current than the SD11 can handle. It was designed for AGP 1.0 spec. (2A 3.3V), but most 32MB on board AGP are compliant with AGP 2.0 (6A , 3.3V). The S3 Savage 4 Pro, ASUS V6800, TNT2 Ultra and GeForce 256 all fail to work with the SD11.<hr></blockquote>

I'm sorry if this isn't the sort of answer you're looking for. I can understand if it isn't a sufficient answer for your problem since you've probably been using your video card with this motherboard for quite a while. I can only suggest possibly going down to 640 x 480 in CMBO to see if it will play without locking up. Also try a smaller scenario (like the Tutorial) to see if this makes any difference (fewer polygons and textures).

The SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus is an IRQ that is grabbed by ACPI. Under Windows98 I'd typically consider ACPI unnecessary, but if you disable it in the CMOS/BIOS setup you may find yourself reinstalling all sorts of drivers.

The PCI bus typically can only use 4 IRQs, despite the number of PCI slots and/or free IRQs. PCI devices include the AGP slot video cards, PCI bus peripherals, USB bus devices and other non-standard devices on the motherboard (though some older on-board soundcards may be ISA, but that is somewhat rare). I'm not sure if ACPI will take a PCI IRQ or not, it may. Some CMOS/BIOS setups allow you to disable the allocation of an IRQ to ACPI (I don't know if this slows down ACPI or not when the IRQ is disabled for it). Therefore it's possible that you'll be unable to assign any PCI devices to a free IRQ by disabling one of your COM ports (though disabling ACPI may allow for this).

[ 10-25-2001: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]</p>

[Tom Hainlin]

Marc - Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, even with ambient sounds off it still froze the first time I played. Hmm.

Herr Schrullenhaft - I wouldn't have thought to check the FIC FAQ about the voltage requirements of a 32MB AGP card. You are correct, I've run the same video card and motherboard for two years without any problem. And while it probably wasn't the answer I was looking for, it doesn't come as a real surprise either. Thanks for the thoughtful and insightful response. The FIC board hasn't been kind to me (installing that Advansys SCSI adapter was a real bear), and the electric shock didn't do it any good, either. Might just be time for an upgrade.

Anybody heard anything about the ASUS A7V266 (VIA KT-266)?

[Schrullenhaft]

I typically recommend ASUS boards. You may want to wait on upgrading though. The initial VIA KT-266 chipsets were dogs as performers. I'm not sure if the latest BIOS versions have addressed this to a certain extent. VIA has recently re-engineered the chipset (now designated KT-266A). This is now the highest performing Athlon chipset available (the upcoming NVidia 440 dual-memory channel chipset based boards may be faster). ASUS will be making a board based on the KT-266A called the A7V266-E with RAID (Promise or HighPoint) and a CMedia 87xx audio chip, but I'm not sure when it will be released or shipping in quantity. These boards are DDR only.

Here's one review of the A7V266:

Viahardware