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Author Topic:   My Terran.exe fault

Croaker posted 03-03-99 05:20 PM ET
Ok. Heres my addition to the terran.exe page fault world<G>.
I get the fault somewhere within 30-90 minutes of play.. although it has happened once or twice within 5-10 min.
Removing all other tasks does nothing.
Reinstalling DX6.1 does nothing.
Reinstalling SMAC does nothing.
Different game (ie. starting over) does nothing.
I have the dont use DX line in my ini as well as the eax one.
A couple of times my whole system reboots or locks hard, but this could just be the fault happening at a very inopportune time.
Also, and this is very odd.. I lose my keyboard sometimes. Even quiting SMAC doesnt bring it back, I have to reboot to get it back. This only happens in SMAC.
My System:
AMD K6 200
64 mg SDRAM
ASUS TX97 Motherboard
4.1 Gig WD Caviar
2.1 Gig WD Caviar
32x CD
6x2x Ricoh Burner
SB 16 w/WaveBlaster Daughterboard
PCMCIA adapter with Wavelan IEEE wireless eithernet card
Matrox Milliunium 2mg
Diamond Monster I
I think thats it...
Lemme know whats up ... and thanks<G>
Steve
Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS posted 03-04-99 10:41 AM ET
What's the HD status? Make sure you've got loads of HD space free and that windows is managing the swap file on the OS drive (or wherever you allocated the virtual memory).
jkm
firaxis games
Croaker posted 03-04-99 03:34 PM ET
Oops.. forgot to say.. over 500mg free on C and yup, the OS is managing just fine with it on C.
Another note. My game..(the one I play every night until a crash) has perma locked. Its just about 4 computer moves after my save.. 2 probes battle it out and the bang, lock. Any way to get by this?
Steve
Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS posted 03-05-99 10:41 AM ET
Try loading an autosave about 10 turns back and alter your strategy slightly. Usually gets you past. Try keeping the CD in the drive (some people said that made all the difference).
jkm
firaxis games
Todd Bailey posted 03-05-99 12:32 PM ET
Even though my system has the latest sound/vidio drivers, plenty of free disk space and DirectX was properly installed with DxDiag reporting no problems, SMAC would crash with problems in terran.exe every two or three turns.
My system also has a Matrox Millennium card with hardware acceleration. It turned out that the vidio card did not have a hardware interrupt assigned to it. I suspect that hardware interrupts for the sound card (AWE64) were causing problems with vidio functions. You have the same vidio card so, that MAY be part of your problem. You can check Win95 IRQ status as follows:
(1) Right-click "My Computer" on the Windows desktop background.
(2) Click the "Properties" menu item.
(3) Click the "Device Manager" tab.
(4) Click the "Properties" button.
(5) Check if your vidio display driver appears in the IRQ list.
IF NOT, that MAY be part of your problem...
Download the latest driver pack from Matrox. There is a utility with the pack that you can use to set an IQR in your autoexec.bat file. There is also a test utility for the card. I have not had even a single terran.exe crash after correcting this problem.
Regards
Todd Bailey
Croaker posted 03-08-99 05:12 PM ET
Ok.. Ive checked the Video card, it was using a IRQ. Also, I always play with the CD in. SO... whats next?
Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS posted 03-08-99 05:50 PM ET
Try disabling the hardware acceleration. Right click on my computer, select properties, then performance, then graphics. Set the slider to 0. Also, try adding ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1 to the alpha centauri.ini file. You might try disabling the unit animations as well.
jkm
firaxis games
Nord posted 03-08-99 06:11 PM ET
The Terran.exe bug is a problem in the code.
I get it mostly at the Northern most hexes so I just stay away from there. When I run debug on the crash I get Access violation
0047a5a3 mov ax, word ptr [edx+0Ah]. Sounds like someone droped a pointer.
Croaker posted 03-13-99 02:19 PM ET
Ok.. I turned the old Voxel on.. no effect.
I put video acceration at 0. Little effect.
It seemed that it took longer to crash with video acceleration off, but not sure. Still crashed.
So what now??
Steve
elemkay posted 03-17-99 09:18 AM ET
Ok, I'm the first to admit I know very little about game coding and even less about pointers. :-b But what Nord said struck a chord with me. I've been playing for about ten days, and successfully won a few games with economic and diplomatic victories without any errors.
But now I'm about 25 turns away from Transcend and I get one of the dreaded terran.exe faults. It occurs at exactly the same point in the game - one of Miriam's transports magically appears in my (University) territory in a very topmost square and then the game dies.
I've still got a few things I can try, I've only got 32M RAM currently and I need to free up some HD space for saves, but I just thought I'd mention it since it was also related to northern squares.
- Linda
Brian Reynolds FIRAXIS posted 03-17-99 05:23 PM ET
The Nord/elemkay problem sounds like one which is fixed in V 3.0.
BR
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Author	Topic: My Terran.exe fault
Croaker	posted 03-03-99 05:20 PM ET Ok. Heres my addition to the terran.exe page fault world<G>. I get the fault somewhere within 30-90 minutes of play.. although it has happened once or twice within 5-10 min. Removing all other tasks does nothing. Reinstalling DX6.1 does nothing. Reinstalling SMAC does nothing. Different game (ie. starting over) does nothing. I have the dont use DX line in my ini as well as the eax one. A couple of times my whole system reboots or locks hard, but this could just be the fault happening at a very inopportune time. Also, and this is very odd.. I lose my keyboard sometimes. Even quiting SMAC doesnt bring it back, I have to reboot to get it back. This only happens in SMAC. My System: AMD K6 200 64 mg SDRAM ASUS TX97 Motherboard 4.1 Gig WD Caviar 2.1 Gig WD Caviar 32x CD 6x2x Ricoh Burner SB 16 w/WaveBlaster Daughterboard PCMCIA adapter with Wavelan IEEE wireless eithernet card Matrox Milliunium 2mg Diamond Monster I I think thats it... Lemme know whats up ... and thanks<G> Steve
Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS	posted 03-04-99 10:41 AM ET What's the HD status? Make sure you've got loads of HD space free and that windows is managing the swap file on the OS drive (or wherever you allocated the virtual memory). jkm firaxis games
Croaker	posted 03-04-99 03:34 PM ET Oops.. forgot to say.. over 500mg free on C and yup, the OS is managing just fine with it on C. Another note. My game..(the one I play every night until a crash) has perma locked. Its just about 4 computer moves after my save.. 2 probes battle it out and the bang, lock. Any way to get by this? Steve
Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS	posted 03-05-99 10:41 AM ET Try loading an autosave about 10 turns back and alter your strategy slightly. Usually gets you past. Try keeping the CD in the drive (some people said that made all the difference). jkm firaxis games
Todd Bailey	posted 03-05-99 12:32 PM ET Even though my system has the latest sound/vidio drivers, plenty of free disk space and DirectX was properly installed with DxDiag reporting no problems, SMAC would crash with problems in terran.exe every two or three turns. My system also has a Matrox Millennium card with hardware acceleration. It turned out that the vidio card did not have a hardware interrupt assigned to it. I suspect that hardware interrupts for the sound card (AWE64) were causing problems with vidio functions. You have the same vidio card so, that MAY be part of your problem. You can check Win95 IRQ status as follows: (1) Right-click "My Computer" on the Windows desktop background. (2) Click the "Properties" menu item. (3) Click the "Device Manager" tab. (4) Click the "Properties" button. (5) Check if your vidio display driver appears in the IRQ list. IF NOT, that MAY be part of your problem... Download the latest driver pack from Matrox. There is a utility with the pack that you can use to set an IQR in your autoexec.bat file. There is also a test utility for the card. I have not had even a single terran.exe crash after correcting this problem. Regards Todd Bailey
Croaker	posted 03-08-99 05:12 PM ET Ok.. Ive checked the Video card, it was using a IRQ. Also, I always play with the CD in. SO... whats next?
Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS	posted 03-08-99 05:50 PM ET Try disabling the hardware acceleration. Right click on my computer, select properties, then performance, then graphics. Set the slider to 0. Also, try adding ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1 to the alpha centauri.ini file. You might try disabling the unit animations as well. jkm firaxis games
Nord	posted 03-08-99 06:11 PM ET The Terran.exe bug is a problem in the code. I get it mostly at the Northern most hexes so I just stay away from there. When I run debug on the crash I get Access violation 0047a5a3 mov ax, word ptr [edx+0Ah]. Sounds like someone droped a pointer.
Croaker	posted 03-13-99 02:19 PM ET Ok.. I turned the old Voxel on.. no effect. I put video acceration at 0. Little effect. It seemed that it took longer to crash with video acceleration off, but not sure. Still crashed. So what now?? Steve
elemkay	posted 03-17-99 09:18 AM ET Ok, I'm the first to admit I know very little about game coding and even less about pointers. :-b But what Nord said struck a chord with me. I've been playing for about ten days, and successfully won a few games with economic and diplomatic victories without any errors. But now I'm about 25 turns away from Transcend and I get one of the dreaded terran.exe faults. It occurs at exactly the same point in the game - one of Miriam's transports magically appears in my (University) territory in a very topmost square and then the game dies. I've still got a few things I can try, I've only got 32M RAM currently and I need to free up some HD space for saves, but I just thought I'd mention it since it was also related to northern squares. - Linda
Brian Reynolds FIRAXIS	posted 03-17-99 05:23 PM ET The Nord/elemkay problem sounds like one which is fixed in V 3.0. BR