This is not just related to GPL but to all hardware accelerated games.
This is not the first time I have posted regarding this problem, but it
did go away, only to reappear in a similar form after I thought I had
fried my processor during a complete system reinstall. Today however I
put a k6 300 in and the problem is still there so its not the processor
that's fried its something else, though what I don't know.
I was able to resolve the original lockups when I moved the HD, which
was originally situated directly over the CPU, to another location, but
had to go through a windows reinstall when I got a msgsrv failure when I
tried to reinstall my jstick port resulting in windows failing to start
at all. However, it was during the reinstallation and before I had put
the V2 card back in that the CPUs fan failed whilst I was out of the
room, so I put my V2 card probs, once it was added, down to the CPu now
being slightly iffy. I also reasoned that this was the case because I
was also having general windows problems where explorer would fail if I
had too many windows open, though this problem has not appeared for the
last month since I now remove the computer case before starting up. I
now know it's not the CPU that's fried though.
I have a Guillemot Maxi Gamer 3d2 PCI Voodoo2 card with 12meg memory.
It uses the latest drivers that I downloaded from Guillemot's own site
and which are specifically for this card and I have DirectX 7.0a
installed on Win95 OSR2. My mobo is a Commate S7AX Ver 1.071 with an
Ali Alladin V chipset running Award BIOS 4.51with an AMD k6-2 450 and
128meg RAM and my non 3d card is an sis 6215c in another PCI slot and I
have a bigger and better computer case than before the fan failure for
more spacing of peripherals.
Before I play GPL I have to test the card to see if its ok, which it
usually isn't, using the directX diagnostics tool because otherwise
normally GPL won't even start. When I test direct 3d on display 2, my
v2 card, even software rendering is a mess. The spinning cube is in the
centre of the screen, but is jittery and its edges are not smooth,
whilst there are also 2 more displaced cube images, one to each side,
which are very blocky, fragmented and jittery. When this happens then
I know that it's not even worth trying to test using hardware
accelerated rendering because in this test the screen locks and the only
fix is ctrl-alt-del which restarts my machine, though windows seems
unaware that I haven't closed it down properly and will boot up without
running scandisk, which is also unusual.
So what I have to do in DXdiag is cancel out of the tests and then
physically press down on and wiggle slightly my V2 card - I don't like
to do this but if I don't do this the test results in Dx diag are always
messed up - and then go back and retest the card. Generally it will
look ok 2nd time around, though on odd occasions I have to do this more
than once. Once it's ok under software rendering it's ok in hardware
accelerated rendering. However, this doesn't mean GPL is going to work
ok, though at least it guarantees that GPL will start.
GPL will then generally lockup when first used within the first 10
minutes requiring me to end task on it, do the card wiggle and then
restart GPL. However, GPL will only lock up a couple of times and once
the card has gone beyond 10 minutes without a problem it works fine, but
only real cure for problem seems to be method used above.
What has me stumped is why the card is happy to work once it's warmed up
nicely. I've changed PCI slots to no avail. I think my next step will
be to change the card, but this won't be for a few weeks yet and so, in
the meantime, if anyone has a clue as to what might be happening or any
suggestion at all as to things to try - I'm game :) - it will be much
appreciated.
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.