posted 08-02-99 10:35 AM ET            

jkm

firaxis games

posted 08-04-99 09:40 AM ET            

jkm

posted 08-05-99 11:34 PM ET            

Can play for 10 mins, 1 hr, 2hrs, then suddenly, with absolutely no reason.. It just locks up, sounds and all just comes to an instant end.

I can play Quake2 for 6 hours in a row, and never have a crash.

Btw; I must admit that SMAC rates as the #1 heat-it-up game on my CPU It averages 1C above Quake2 ... So it could be a heat problem... still, I don't think so, because then sound would keep in there... But sound just cuts off instantly. Also, on the V4.0, there is a _LOT_ of static on the sound when units move around ...

Btw; Using K6-III 450 @ 500Mhz.

posted 08-06-99 10:16 AM ET            

jkm

posted 08-06-99 01:00 PM ET            

My system is as follows:
AMD K6-III 450@500.
AOpen AX59Pro MVP3.
128Mb 10ns, and 128Mb 8ns => 256Mb Ram
Matrox Mystique G200
Adaptec 2940AU SCSI controller
EICON Diva Pro ISDN Card
Realtek RTL8029 PCI Network card
SB AWE64 ISA Card (IRQ5, no conflicts)
Creative VooDoo2, 12Mb
Creative DVD 2x20x
Pioneer 32x SCSI CDROM
Yamaha CDR400t SCSI CDR
ATAPI Zip 100
Windows 98 SE Plus. (US Version)

Else, as a side note, the "noise" is more noticeable at the start of a game, it seems to go away after playing a while. (Or maybe I just get used to it)

I will go and play a bit spartans for some hours later tonight, and give you a status update ...

TNSe

Btw; While I might have your attention, I have a wish for the next patch or alien crossfire...
Please make a new kind of citizen, we already have engineer, transcend, etc, but I am missing a citizen that can remove eco damage. For example:
Eco Worker - Removes 15% Eco damage from city.
Adv Eco Worker - Removed 20% Eco damage and adds +1 research and +2 psych

posted 08-07-99 03:17 PM ET            

The common things seem to be:
AMD-k6 / AMD-k6-2 chips
Nvidia Riva TNT chipsets
Creative soundcard

So I guess the problem must be with those parts somewhere. Strange though, before i replaced my Viper v330 (riva 128) with a Viper v550 (riva tnt) and upgraded to version 3 I never had these problems.

posted 08-07-99 06:17 PM ET            

It actually seems like The static is parts of other samples, like sometimes I will attack mindworms, and at the end of the attack sound, I might get a speech from the last Invention I did... So it seems like it's sending the sample to the soundcard with the length of the sample incorrectly?

I should record it and send to you

posted 08-11-99 11:23 PM ET         

In order to run _any_ AGP card in a Socket 7 system, you will need some
special patches:

Socket 7 Motherboard AGP Checklist:

1. Windows95 OSR2.1, Windows98, NT4 w/ Service Pack 3 (or SP3 +SP4)
2. All motherboard patches installed:

VIA MVP3 chipset-http://www.via.com.tw/drivers/index.htm
� VIA IDE Busmastering drivers
� VIA AGP Driver
� VIA IRQ Routing driver
� PCI Bridge Patch

ALI Alladin V chipset--http://www.ali.com.tw/esd.htm
� ALI IDE driver
� ALI AGP driver
� ALI USB Host Controller Supplement

PC100 AGP Pro --http://www.amptron.com/html/drivers.html
� USB Support Drivers
� AGP Patch file for AGP MBs
� PCI IDE drivers for Pentium

Soyo ETEQ chipset -- ftp://ftp.soyo.com.tw/drivers/eteq/
� IRQ Redirection patch
� South Bridge Identify patch
� IDE Bus Master/Ultra DMA Drivers
� Eteqvxd.exe AGP patch

3. Microsoft� Windows� 95 Update for AMD-K6�-2/350 and
Above--http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/k623d/win95_update_k6.html
4. Latest motherboard bios update
5. Latest Video card
driver--http://www.diamondmm.com/products/drivers/driver-index.html

Also, many Super 7 and Slot 1 motherboards support an AGP bus speed of 100
MHz. This must be jumpered to 66 MHz, which is what the card supports. The
100 MHz. speed is considered overclocking the card and can lead to
instability and heat related visual corruption, as well as lockups.

This card is PCI 2.1 compliant, and the Industry standard for PCI 2.1 is 33
MHz for the PCI BUS. The Industry Standard AGP is 66 MHz, which is twice
the PCI BUS. Some cards may handle the overclocking better than others, but
there are no cards on the market designed for a 100 MHz BUS speed. Anything
higher than 66 MHz is considered overclocking and not supported by Diamond.

Some systems do not have a jumper for this and are instead set through
software. If during any installation you are asked to choose between 'Turbo
Mode' or 'Normal Mode', select 'Normal Mode'.

Your motherboard bios may also have an AGP 2x or Turbo mode option that
overclocks the AGP bus faster than the designed 66mhz. The function will
have to be set to DISABLED or 1X.

One other option to try is, if you have the system set for PC 100 memory, to
drop the memory timing down one step from the PC 100. It will not affect
your performance much, and for one technician here, it was the only way he
could get the card to function for 3D in his AMD system.

For AGP to work with Windows95, here are some basics for any AGP card
(socket7 and PentiumII):

1. Windows 95 version OSR2 (950b or 950c)
2. USB update to upgrade to OSR2.1 (on the windows95 cdrom that says "With
USB support" on the front in the X:\Updates\Other\USB\USBSUPP.EXE or from
this Diamond site--ftp://ftp.diamondmm.de/hotline/files/usbsup.exe) To check
for the OSR2.1, START>RUN>"qfecheck". The windows version should be
4.10.01.1212b or 4.10.01.1212c
3. Chipset patch for the motherboard installed-ie LX, BX, VIA MVP3, ALI V
(if not loaded, in Device Manager will show up under Other Devices as PCI
BRIDGE)
4. DirectX 5.0 or higher installed-http://www.microsoft.com/directx

--------------

Here is the basic Viper troubleshooting guide. If this does not help solve
your problem, please write back with the results of each step.

Make sure that you have installed DirectX 6. This is necessary to use the
advanced options of the Viper.

On some BH6 or BX motherboards, we've discovered that if you are using DIMM
memory, it needs to be in slots 3 and 4. For some reason slots 1 and 2 can
cause lockups during games.

1) Get the latest version of the affected applications.
Could be a bug in the original release of the game or applications.

2) Install any new motherboard BIOS or OS specific patches from the
motherboard manufacturer.
This could resolve issues that the motherboard company has already fixed.

3) If this is an AGP card: Drop the AGP aperture size to 4MB (increase one
notch at a time if this fixes it)
This tends to implicate system RAM or a system that is not implementing the
AGP Aperture size properly. Dropping the memory timings as well as the
memory bus speed may help.

4) Install the newest sound card/modem/mouse/game controller/video drivers.

Here is how to completely clean the drivers from your system and reinstall
them:

Go into your device manager (Control Panel/System) and remove everything
under the heading of Display Adapter, but do not restart. When you are
finished, there will be no category title Display Adapter. Next, if it
exists, look under the heading Other Devices. Remove anything relating to
video from there (PCI Card is not video related, PCI VGA display adapter is
related to video).

Exit out of the device manager and go to Start/Run and type in regedit.
This will bring up your registry editor.
Look under:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
System
Current Control Set
Services
Class
Display

Under Display, delete all folders starting with 00 (as in 0000, 0001, 0002,
etc.)
This will remove all older video drivers that Windows thinks are still
active.

Once they are all gone, then close the registry editor and reboot the
system.

It will come up and re-detect your video card. Force the system to set it
up as the Standard Display Adapter, Standard VGA. The system will either
detect the card as a PCI VGA Display Adapter. If it does that, let it
install those drivers and reboot.

- If it detects the card as the Diamond card, it will then offer to install
the drivers and reboot.

Let it install the drivers, but do not reboot.

If it asks for specific driver files, just click OK, then Skip File for
everything it wants.

Once the drivers are installed, it will ask to reboot. Do _not_ restart.

Go into your device manager (Control Panel/System) and under Display
Adapter, you will see your Diamond card with an exclamation mark (!) in
front of it.
Double click on that listing and select the Driver tab.
Select the Update Driver button.
The Wizard will ask if you want to search for a driver or display a list.
Tell it you want to Display a List, and then click next.
At the bottom of the next screen, select Show All Hardware (Devices).
On the left frame (Manufacturers) scroll to the top and select Standard
Display Types. Directly across from that is Standard Display Adapter VGA.
Just keep clicking Next and Finish.
You may get a warning that the driver is not written for that specific card.

Just keep clicking OK until you are prompted to reboot.
You will then come up with the Std. VGA drivers installed.

Once the system reboots and you are back on the desktop, install the drivers
that you downloaded.

When you install the drivers, you may get a Version Conflict Error (The file
you are copying is older than one currently on your system). Windows will
prompt you to keep the newer versions. You want to select NO to overwrite
all files except for MFC42.DLL and MSVCRT.DLL - these two you want to select
YES to keep.
Also, if you have Internet Explorer 5 installed, and you are offered to
overwrite the file: COMCTL32.DLL, do _NOT_ overwrite this file. Keep the
version already installed in your system.
This is especially true with the OpenGL files. You need to have the version
installed that comes with the card, or else you will get errors when running
OpenGL applications.

5) Just as a test, underclock the processor to the lowest setting the
system allows.
This may help with processors that may be overheating.

6) Below is a checklist of BIOS settings you should make sure about. This
list assumes that you have installed the latest BIOS for your motherboard
(as well as all the latest patches for your motherboard and chipset).

Boot into the motherboard BIOS (a.k.a.: CMOS, System Setup) by pressing the
designated key at the beginning of bootup. You will see a message something
like "Press DEL to enter Setup" or Press F1...". DEL and F1 are the most
common keys, but watch your screen to see what key you need to hit on your
system.

Look around in the BIOS for the settings listed below. Change the settings
to the preferred settings [indicated in square brackets]. If you make any
changes, note them so that if you need to change them back you can! Also,
please be aware that since there is no standardization in the realm of
BIOSes, it is difficult to know which categories you will find these
settings listed under. Not every setting will be in every BIOS, either.

[BIOS SETTINGS: PCI/AGP]
- IRQ assignment [enable]
- Boot with PnP O/S [enable]
- Pallet snooping [disable]
- PCI bursting [disable]
- PCI latency timer [128 or the highest setting]
- Peer concurrency [disable]
- Video BIOS shadowing [disable]
- Video BIOS cacheable [disable]
- Video RAM cacheable [disable]
- USWC options ["Uncache Speculative Write Combining" is on some PII`s and
PPros, and is similar to Video BIOS Shadowing/caching]
- Pipeline Cache Write [disable]

[BIOS SETTINGS: AGP-specific]
- USB [enabled]
- PCI 2.1 compliancy [enable- also may assign IRQ to VGA]
- Passive release/refresh [enabled]
- Delayed transactions [enabled]
- VGA BIOS Sequence [AGP-PCI, PCI-AGP, PCI]
- AGP/Graphics aperture size [4 MB]
[the following setting may be worded in three very different ways, but the
result is basically the same - Disable]
- AGP Bus Turbo Mode [disable]
- AGP Transfer Mode [1x]
- AGP set to 2/3 instead of 1/1 [Make sure the AGP bus is running at 66 MHz]

[BIOS SETTINGS: Multiprocessors]
- MPS or MP-SPEC [1.1]

Should these settings fail, Load BIOS Defaults.

7) End-Task on everything running in the background except explorer and
systray.
Applications running in the background can take up system resources or
interfere with normal operation.

8) Try the reference TNT drivers from http://www.nvidia.com. Currently,
the direct link is:
http://www.nvidia.com/Marketing/Developer/OpenDrvDwn.nsf/4938fcf0bd98786a882
565fb006924e7?OpenView. The drivers for the Riva TNT and TNT2 are located
in the Products section.
This should generally eliminate the possibility of an incompatibility with
installed software.

9) The easiest method to determine if your card is getting an IRQ:

--- If you have an Award BIOS, you are likely to see a "PCI Device
Listing..." at the early part of bootup. You can see from this list if the
"display controller" is assigned an IRQ or if it says "n/a". If it says
"n/a" you will need to enable the "Assign IRQ for VGA" line in your BIOS; if
it is getting and IRQ, make sure that it is not sharing it with another
device in this list AND in Windows (see the IRQ list in the Device Manager).
---
a) Open your Control Panel

b) Double-click on System

c) Select the Tab that reads "Device Manager"

d) Double-click on the top option "Computer"

e) This will bring up a list of all the IRQs being used, and which device is
using it.

f) Look to see if your video card is using an IRQ (It will be listed as VGA
Display Adapter, or whichever drivers you are using).

If the card is not getting an IRQ, look in your BIOS for an option to
"Assign IRQ to VGA."

In the main device manager page, double-click on the Computer Icon at the
top. This will bring up a list of all your IRQs. Make sure that nothing
else is on the same IRQ as the video card, except for IRQ Holder. If you
have shared IRQs, you need to contact your motherboard manufacturer for
information on reassigning them (however, moving cards will usually do the
trick). Remember, your PCI Slot 1 will share the same IRQ as the AGP slot,
if you have one. In that case, move the other card to a different PCI slot
and it should change the IRQ.
---

10) If all else fails, try the card in another system.
This will allow us to test the two components separately. If the problem
follows the card, then we can usually assume that the card is at fault.

posted 08-12-99 06:07 AM ET            

I'll try re-installing the agp driver in normal mode!!!!