The game is freezing/No translucency

[calle]

I am running a a

KMD-K6 III MMX 3dNow,477 Mhz. 96 MB Ram

Video Trident Cyberblade i7AGP

(whereof 8 is used for Shared Video RAM)

Its a HP pavillion Laptop running Win98

I have DX8, and installed the latest patch.

Prob 1:

I have this seemingly commin problem:

The game tends to freeze. The mouse locks, and when I click a mouebutton it sounds beep. Just after I commissioned my orders an pressed gobutton.

YES - my soundcard and video card share the same IRQ.

The problem persists if I turn off sound hardware acc.

Of what I've understood this could perhaps be some IRQ conflict between Soundcard and videocard, or maybe a mouseproblem.

If so where could I update my drivers?

Prob 2

The game wont accept transluct buildings,

And dont know why.

PS

I have very low tech knowledge about this

kind of stuff, I just wanna issue my orers and play the game.

All help/suggestions greatly appreciated

Thanx

Calle

[Schrullenhaft]

It's hard to say if the shared IRQ is causing your problem. It's possible, but since your lockups seem to occur during the "turn crunching" I wouldn't think that it is the culprit here. IRQ sharing on a laptop is a bit harder to adjust than on a desktop. Since both components are built-in to your laptop, you may be unable to reassign their IRQ usage.

The lack of transparency support is probably a video driver issue. Unfortunately the only source for the Cyberblade i7 drivers is probably going to be HP (though there are some from Compaq, supposedly). VIA (the chipset manufacturer who uses Trident's Cyberblade video core in their chipset) doesn't offer this driver, but there is a chipset driver for the MVP4 (which is the VIA chipset in this case, to my knowledge). This driver most likely won't solve your problems since it doesn't address any sort of DirectX functionality, but it could be worth a try to see if it helps your situation at all or not:

VIA 4-in-1 Drivers (download the one for the Apollo MVP4 near the bottom of the list):

http://www.via.com.tw/drivers/index_new2.htm

Here are some Trident Cyberblade i7 drivers from NEC (I believe). Compare the posted version here (6.50.5495-47) to your current version. If it is newer, then it may be worth a try, but keep an installable copy of your current drivers just in case it doesn't work (which is a very likely possibility).

NEC Versa Cyberblade i7 drivers (go to Video section and download the drivers for Win98 2nd Ed.):

http://www.zdsftp.com/support/drv/cat281.html

As for the lockups - do you have any other programs loaded up ? Do you have any utilities running in the background ? I'd suggest a desktop that is just a plain color rather than any stretched bitmaps or JPEGs. You may want to Ctrl-Alt-Del and see what is currently running on your system. You may want to shut down any programs that aren't necessary for your sound or video (or network connection). You may also want to adjust any power saving settings you have (often in the BIOS/CMOS or via a program or the Power Saving control panel). You want the CPU to run at full speed at all times while playing CM.

Most problematic mouse drivers cause video anomalies. I don't think that it would cause your lockup problem, but if it is something other than a driver that comes with Windows (new Logitech driver, etc.), then an upgrade may be appropriate.

Your AMD CPU's speed seems a bit non-standard. Is it actually a 450Mhz or is the POST screen (the very first screen where memory is counted and other info pops up on the screen before Windows boots) actually listing it as a 477Mhz ? If you're overclocking, you may want to scale back the CPU speed to see if this helps (it could also cause video locks, especially since your display uses a UMA architecture for the video memory).