rec.autos.simulators

Ok, time to eat a little crow here...  Excuse the feathers floating
around....   After bashing N2 for it's crummy performance in the Rendition
mode, and hearing about some of you guys with Atari 2600's ( ok, slight
exaggeration ) running this thing with results that at least made you
happy, I finally broke down and dl'ed dmddiag and ran it on my system.  My
FIFO was at 13 mb/sec, and my DMA was a blistering 7.8 mb/sec.  Yep, it was
the games fault, right?   After looking for the suggested ' PCI latency '
setting in my BIOS, and not finding it, I turned to the resident expert.
Can you guess who?  Yep, Mr. Busch himself.  He very quickly located a site
that had what turned out to be an upgrade to my BIOS, and after I installed
it, I picked up a whooping 48 mb/sec increase.   An INCREASE of 48 mb/sec,
which took me to a DMA transfer speed of 58.7 mb/sec.  While I realise that
this isn't fast by the P166> standards, it is miles above what I had.
Hell, I can even drive at Bristol now and stay on the track and not get
motion sick from all the chop.  Now, I am only running with 6 cars drawn
ahead, but all the graphics are set to auto.  In heavy traffic it does turn
off the asphalt, but once I get in some clear track it switches back on.
Min =20 Max = 25.  Not too bad for a free download and a little time spent
working, and not sleeping.

Again, sorry for bashing your fine product Papy.  ( But how about that save
thing, huh? )

But, I can't explain why ICRII ran so well the way it was.  Heck, I am
scared to play it now.  Probably run too dang fast!!  :-)

Interesting. What BIOS and web site?

Regards,
        ---Wayne

Your BIOS needs are very specific, it depends on the brand and chipset
of your motherboard.  Robert had a PT-2000 MB, made by First
International Computer of America.  His BIOS upgrade would not be of
much use to you, but for most users the newest BIOS revision for their
particular MB solves the DMA issues.  For others, the brand needs to be
switched.  For example some people have been unable to get DMA to work
with MR BIOS, but after flashing to AMIBIOS the problems are resolved.

--

Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
The IWCCCARS Project: Q & A Representative
Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

Not much chance that the Reactor problems with Cyrix systems could be
fixed through BIOs settings or upgrade, eh? I think I am off to get an
Intel.

For bios upgrades I recommend trying...
http://www.ping.be/bios/bios.html
That site covers just about every motherboard known.

The old BIOS was dated April 95, and the newer one is dated Oct 95.  Big
jump in just a few months.

The BIOS is by Award, and it uses the Triton chipset.  The motherboard is a
PT-2000, and the manufacturer has a site at http://www.fica.com/pt2000.html

Your best bet would be to do a search of the Web for your Motherboard, by
model, and see if it pops up.  Award didn't have an upgrade for the BIOS, I
had to get it from the motherboard manufacturer / seller.

Again, just this simple upgrade increased my DMA speed from an origional
8.7 mb/sec to 58.7 md/sec.  One hell of a difference.

Robert

Damn!  I wish I had your luck...  I looked everywhere for an upgrade
for my Award Bios and I'm still empty handed...  I had the same
problem as you did, there is nowhere to adjust PCI latency in the bios
settings, so I guess I'll have to find something else, and since my
DMA is even slower than yours was (I have a P100) I am desperately
looking for any solution...  Or else I'm gonna have to buy a new
motherboard...  Tell me there's something else I can do, I'm just a
poor student far away from home!  HELP!!!

Who manufactures your motherboard?  They may have a home page on the web.

[snip]

Check these sites:
http://www.ping.be/bios/
or
http://www.dfw.net/~sdw/index.html

-Jani

I will _PAY_ for any help I can get on the subject, I'm really
desperate as you can see...

A. Renault

Thanks a lot, I've found it with your help and guess what...  it's at
www.pcchips.com!  I couldn't find it because I was always searching
for PC-Chip and no search engine had a clue...  Thanx, now let's see
if they have Bios flash upgrades...

Thanks for that info!  I found a bios upgrade for my MB there, it
almost doubled my N2 performance with the rendition.  I can use the 8
bit textures with everything on and 20 cars ahead now on every track
except martinsville (P133), whereas before even the 4 bit textures
would get choppy on some of the slow tracks!  Just saved me $100+ for
a new motherboard <g>.

David

You're only young once, but you can stay immature forever.

Amen.