rec.autos.simulators

I originally bought my Maxi 3D2 PCI by Guillemot to go with my K6 300
with 64Mb PC66 RAM and all was well.  Ne'er a lockup in site and was
able to play all 3dfx games, GPL included, without any hassles.
However, about 2 months ago I upgraded to a K6-2 450 which required
upgrading the mobo to a Commate S7AX aswell, though I stuck with my PC66
memory, and my card problems started hereon in.

I thought that they may have been memory related, but recently upgraded
memory to PC100 only to find that the problems persist.  So what are my
probs :-

The usual one where the screen locks up but you can hear the sound still
going, generally regarded as an overheating problem.  The thing is I've
reduced the clock speed on the card to its lowest setting of 85 and I
have the casing completely open to allow for plenty of air circulation
but still it makes no difference.  Sometimes there will be no problems
and on other occasions the problems will occur after about 3 or 4
minutes of GPL running.  Sometimes it won't even startup at all.  Now,
here's the thing, as I have the casing open I can get at the card and if
I press it firmly into the PCI slot, even though it doesn't seem to be
seating the card any better, this will invariably allow GPL to start if
it failed to do so on the previous occasion.  I have already changed PCI
slots once and this failed to remedy the problem.  Also, as I said,
sometimes after the game has locked up I can Ctrl-Alt-Del to close it
and then restart it and it will run without problems.  Another thing
I've noticed is that it seems to behave itself more online than offline.
Although it does lockup on occasion online, this is generally early on
and then it seems to settle down after 15 minutes of online racing and
thereafter I can race without the problem re-occurring.  Unfortunately,
offline this isn't the case.  Once it has locked up it keeps doing so
time after time and generally within 10 minutes of GPL restarting.

Another thing that is happening that may be completely unrelated but I
might as well mention it.  Sometimes the steering goes all out of wack -
I use a joystick - it first manifests itself by the front wheels getting
the judders when going from brake to accelerate quickly just for a split
second as they jiggle from side to side ***ly and then all is well.
However, after approximately 10 minutes - and this is pretty regular as
for instance I can run 3 laps at Spa which includes the outlap but on
the early part of my 3rd flying lap this occurs - the cars steering just
loses its calibration completely and the car veers off to the left
engine revving like crazy no matter what I do.  I can literally take my
hands off the controller and the car will still be revving away like mad
driving up the nearest bit of banking or whatever is in the vicinity.
Also, if I am able to do a reset (shift-R) before it happens then the 10
minutes or so starts from the point I do the reset.  Now here's the
thing with this.  It never happens when online,  only offline, although
I do still get the judders occasionally.  Even if I set GPL to
multiplayer and become the host it still happens if I am not connected
to the internet.  I have not tried to host while online to see if this
still happens as I only have a 56k modem.  I've tried changing
controller profiles but this makes no difference.  In fact, when using
the correct drivers that came with my joystick, it is almost impossible
to calibrate at all in GPL.  It normally takes 2 or three attempts with
the 0 axis not always registering.

As for my graphics card, I have the latest drivers from Guillemot's own
site and have been through 3 incarnations of directX from Version 5,
through 6 and now 7.0a and nothing has improved.  Also just incase it is
relevant, when GPL has locked up I have gone to try and use the dxdiag
program to see if I can test the card through that.  However 50% of the
time after a lockup the dxdiag won't run at all.  I double-click on it
but nothing happens.  It shows as a task that is running but never
appears and I have to end task on it.  Also, if it does run then if I do
the graphics test for 3d the spinning cube is generally a mess, though
once again, if I press down on the card this generally rectifies.  One
more thing, I did notice that the drivers for the 3d card are described
in DXDiag as Voodoo 2 DirectX 6 driver even though I have directX7.0a
currently installed.  Don't know if it's relevant but thought I'd
mention it.

Sorry to have gone on at such length about this, but I felt I needed to
include as much detail as possible, because offline, in between GPL
locking up or the joystick judders, or just recently 'this program has
performed an illegal operation', I am finding it a waste of time to play
GPL at all.  If no-one can come up with anything that helps then I
intend to do a complete format and re-install of windows and then see if
the card works at the base level.  If it does then I will gradually add
more and more updates and see how things fare to see where the problem
re-occurs.  In the meantime, anyone got any ideas?

Thanks in advance.
--
Peter Ives - (AKA Ivington)

No person's opinions can be said to be
more correct than another's, because each is
the sole judge of his or her own experience.

I was recently suffering screen freeze with my voodoo 3.  I tried everything
to cure it, new drivers, extra cooling etc... but nothing worked ... until
someone pointed me inthe direction of my network card.

Removing all the network protocols from windows (except TCP/IP for the dial
up adapter) cured my problem instantly....

If you have a network card give this a try.... with any luck you'll have
some success.

Hope you get it all fixed soon

Marc

I've got the same card (twice: i.e. in SLI-mode :-) and had similar
problems. I underclocked them to 85 MHz and the problems are gone.

Lio

Your problems are so interesting I had to take a stab at this...

(Fair warning - any advice from me is worth what you pay for it ;)

First, when you upgraded with the new Mobo, etc, what about the
power supply?  I've only had to replace one in ten years with, uhm,
around ten systems (mine, friends, family - more 'free' tech support :<  )
but if it's not up to the new power draw, or just worn out, that would be
one thing I'd check (or just swap --  As cheap as they are, might
be a last resort before formatting and reinstalling Windoze)
 I like the    www.pcpowercooling.com  stuff {Not an ad}  you can pick up
a 230W (or more, they've got some big enough to jumpstart
Frankenstein's monster and your car at once...drool)  supply with fan for
US$65 to $389...  

Also, if you can push in on the video card and have it work, sounds like
you might want to loosen and readjust the motherboard in the case, then
re-seat all the cards?  Are all the standoffs still where they should be
and so on?  It almost sounds like some overheating is just pushing things
out of whack.  I mean, I know these things have moving parts in them, I
just didn't think you'd have to make them move while it's on!

It's my _belief_ that the cover should be on, as the boxes are designed to
move air with the cover on...  (He says, sitting next to a 486
wannabe-Linux project box with the 'extra' HDD*** halfway out, cup of
coffee 2 inches away... :)  Personally, I _like_ wires and chips, I still
want a Lucite case!

Okay, so if I'm totally off base here, sorry, I tend towards changing
hardware (easier for me) than sifting software silliness.  

How are the port settings for the joystick and stuff?  I dunno what kind
of buffer settings (are there any?) are used for controllers - it's almost
like your system has to warm up, which is why I'm wondering about the
general health of power and the other physical things...?

 Since you've done, it sounds like, the whole 'sysinfo' thing, tried any of
the "Tweak" stuff? TweakAll is similar to, but (arguably) slightly superior
to TweakUi - I had a copy from PCAnswers, email me here or at

flush memory cache(s) on the fly, which I'm beginning to miss, and some
other nice cache setup and so on and so on.

Or, virus?  

I've heard that AMD and Win9 5 ,  didn't always get along without a
patch or two, especially above 300 or 350 MHz, but I would _assume_ that's
taken care of by the BIOS on the new board - tried an update for that?  

Or, duh, you're running Win9 8 .   I hear the Service Pack is useful, and
that the "Second Edition" makes a nice coaster?  I just updated (last
night) to IE 5.01 with 128bit encryption, and, I hate to say this, but
this MS product seems to work better than the last one - which was plain
IE 5 with 40bit security/encryption  ( I still like DOS 6.22 ) and also
seems, so far, to be a little more stable.  Wasn't too bad a DL, even with
a 28.8 connection.

Well, I don't think I really have a clue here, but that's par for the
course on Usenet, right?  

Good luck, please post when you figure it out.

Kevin Fathman

--
"And as something of a navel-gazing traffic accident for the casual
reader."  - Dave Sim, Cerebus #249 (Going Home #18)

Jeff: "So are the Mormons."    Kevin: "Yeah, but we have guns."

Nope, I've never had a network card and I only have TCP/IP and dial up
adapter and Client for Msoft networks in my network settings, so
unfortunately it isn't that.
--
Peter Ives - (AKA Ivington)

No person's opinions can be said to be
more correct than another's, because each is
the sole judge of his or her own experience.

First thing I thought of I'm afraid, using TweakALL.  No joy there. :-(
--
Peter Ives - (AKA Ivington)

No person's opinions can be said to be
more correct than another's, because each is
the sole judge of his or her own experience.

Relatively up-to-date casing.  I bought it in mid 1998.  It was fine
with my old mobo and processor, but its worth keeping in mind.

Hehe!  Certainly this mobo wasn't as well positioned as my previous one
in the same casing.  The previous one fitted beatifully and allowed all
cards to be seated without any difficulties.  This one, for some strange
reason, made it very difficult initially to press all cards firmly into
their slots.  It's hard to explain this, but the board seemed to be
lower so that when a card was fastened in place on the casing with a
***it meant that it was too far away from the mobo.  I had to raise
the board up with some packing material (is this potentially the
problem?) to allow the Voodoo card and the Soundcard to seat low enough
in their respective slots.  If I remove the packing material then the
board is going to sit too low again, so I will give it some thought as
to how to raise the board up by some other means that doesnt require
packing to see if things improve.

I only took the cover off because of the problems, because I had heard
that better air circulation often helped.  It was then that I noticed
about the card not being properly seated and used to re-seat the thing
only to see it popping out gradually a day or 2 later.  It was after a
few weeks that I decided to do something about raising the board
slightly to overcome this problem.

I can't find any buffer settings for my controller at all.  There is
something like this for graphics.  There's a hardware acceleration
option for graphics under the performance tab when accessing the System
properties.  This didn't help. :-(

It seems too coincidental that the problems all started with the
addition of a new mobo and processor.

Yeah, I got the AMD patch for OSR2 with the processor.

So, I went to the Saitek Command Centre program which allows the
joystick to be configured for any specific game that I choose (though
I've never felt the need) and lo and behold!  Clicked on the test tab
and it said 'Failed to detect the device - is it plugged in?'.  Oh what
joy!

Looks like I'm going to have to remove the joystick and possibly
reinstall all the Saitek drivers.  That complete Windows re-install is
getting closer by the day. :)
--
Peter Ives - (AKA Ivington)

No person's opinions can be said to be
more correct than another's, because each is
the sole judge of his or her own experience.

 (Btw I missed most of this thread so this info might now apply).

  It might be your processor (new, AMD, I dunno?), but I used to get
-terrible- screen freezes/lockups with GPL (with AMD cpu too). My
Voodoo-2 was overheating. So was my AMD chip. The CPU problem was
solved by a very heavy-duty CPU fan.

 For fun, you might want to take off your case cover, get a nice and
big house-fan, turn it on full-blast, and get it as close as you can
to your cards/chips, etc. If GPL runs fine, that'd be the problem (CPU
and/or Voodoo2 is too hot).

 The way I fixed my voodoo-2 was to get one of those cheap
exhuast-fans that take the place of a PCI slot (looks like a card is
installed, but it's a fan, and blows out the back). I got one and
placed it right below the voodoo-2, and it keeps it cool from the fan
swirling below it.

Matt

-Teehole

Having now discovered this I thought it would be a simple process of
changing to digital mode and then re-selecting the Saitek Cyborg from
the list for my joystick.  However, things didn't quite go according to
plan.  When I came to calibrate the stick it refused to calibrate
properly.  When it asked for the stick to be rotated fully the
crosshairs would not move to the right of centre during this process.
This suggests to me that the drivers have become corrupted in some way
because I had downloaded a patch just after getting the stick that
remedied what they described as the left drift of the joystick.  Having
the crosshairs not able to move right of centre sounds very much like
some sort of left drift to me so I intend to reinstall the drivers some
time this evening.

Meantime, I have gone back to analogue mode and just use CH F-16 Combat
Stick as the joystick driver.  Mind you, during calibration of this
things didn't quite go smoothly.  Just near the end of the calibration
process windows suddenly decided that the joystick was no longer
connected.  I clicked on resume and was able to finish, but it made me
wonder if the stick had some sort of intermittent electrical fault,
somewhere.  Perhaps in the cabling.

So, I've gone back to GPL and the jitters have subsided, though not
completely, but they are better.  Also the ten minute calibration loss
has disappeared for now.  The old V2 card has been behaving itself for
the last hour also, so I've managed to get some offline practice in for
a change without a need for numerous restarts.  I used to enjoy offline
races at Grand Prix level against the AI but I can't remember the last
time I had a go at that.  Who knows, maybe someday soon. :)
--
Peter Ives - (AKA Ivington)

No person's opinions can be said to be
more correct than another's, because each is
the sole judge of his or her own experience.

No person's opinions can be said to be
more correct than another's, because each is
the sole judge of his or her own experience.

 Well it worked for me. A while ago, I had an AMD 233 (O-clocked to
250, and at 83MHz bus-speed), and bought some $80.00 cooling
fan/heat-sink (very large, about 3" tall!) and it kept that old chip
"froze"..<g>. Come to think of it, that was the "main" problem at
first, at least with GPL. Also took a circular saw, and cut a 2.25"
hole cut right into the case (directly in front of the CPU) and that
did the job,... (geesh..<g>).

 Recently,  I bought a new motherboard and a Celeron-433, but then had
the same screen freezes in GPL again (with the same old Voodoo-2). A
house fan blowing on "high" right on the vid-card showed me I was
overheating the VD2.

 Another trick to keep things cool; keep your hard-disks (or anything
that generates heat) up as high as you can in your case. They all
generate heat, and the higher they are, the less chance they can
warm-up any cards/chips, etc.

 I also have an additional 4" box-fan (from Radio Shack) that just
happened to "squeeze in" above the power supply. Look in your case,
and see if you might be able to stuff another fan in there. The case's
front-fan don't seem to do much (in my opinion).

 Good luck, I do remember those GPL freezes, it wasn't fun.

 Matt

-Teehole

Well, guess what!  My hard disk had been pretty close to my CPU, really
because there had been nowhere else to position it in the case and on
feeling it things did seem pretty warm.  The other 3.5 inch bays held a
floppy disk and a zip drive which couldn't be placed anywhere else you
see.  Anyway, I just got the hard disk as far away from the CPU as I
could by putting it in a 5.25 bay 3 days ago - it is currently held in
place by 1***- and, although I did have one lockup within 10 minutes
of doing this, since then I have been able to run GPL and any other
games that use 3d hardware without ne'er a lockup in sight.  Something
like 4 hours+ of offline Voodoo2 usage without a problem. :)

I'm not counting my chickens entirely, but this sure looks promising. :)

As far as my joystick problems go things are still a wee bit dodgy.  I
attached an old f-16 combat stick which had a dodgy pot just to compare
things.  Strange?  No pot jitters during calibration.  Tried GPL and
steering seemed rock solid - certainly no jiggies and the pot prob
seemed to have gone - though I wondered how I ever played GPL with this
thing as I couldn't brake without serious front wheel lockups for
toffees.  Anyway, after about half an hour things started to go a bit
weird.  I found myself having to steer more and more to the left to keep
the car going straight and no amount of resets made any difference.  The
damned thing was losing its calibration!  So I went to recalibrate and
it failed to do so properly with the steering axis coming up
'Unassigned'.  Looked like that pot was iffy after all.  When I tried
doing the calibration real slow I noticed that at a particular point it
would suddenly spike from the left side all the way over to the right.
Grrrr!

Went back to my Saitek Cyborg, but when calibrating this controller in
game controllers a box kept popping up telling me it wasn't connected.
Right, time to take this thing apart.  After doing this and checking for
any unattached wires or lose components, without success I might add, I
was then able to calibrate it without the familiar 'not connected' box.

Went back to GPL and ran a few laps and indeed it seemed better at
first.  However, by day 3 and the jiggies are starting to reappear, but
without the calibration going completely out or wack like it used to.
Could be the joystick has become faulty in some way.  Not another one?
These things don't last 2 months.  If it ain't pots its something else.
The only way I'm going to be able to confirm this is to get another
Saitek Cyborg.  Hopefully sometime this month.

One last thing, to celebrate my lap of offline lockups I put up 3 new
PBs. :)

1:26.6 at Monaco, an improvement of 1.5 seconds :)
1:57.3 at Rouen improving by half a second :)
1:21.8 at Mosport today.  Only a 10th better here, but I was having to
fight those jiggies again. :(

Still, thanks to all for the help and especially to you teehole. :)

<snip>
--
Peter Ives