rec.autos.simulators

After waiting a year 'til I could afford to upgrade the family computer,
I've been practicing GPL offline for about a month, and have gotten down to
regular 1:10s at Watkins Glen in Allison Hines' Coventry setup. I'm
starting to think about racing online, but the word seems to be "no
winmodems". That was the one sub-par piece on this pc (433 celeron,
voodoo3). Would it be unwise to try online racing until I upgrade the
modem?

Thanks.

Chris Noto
cnoto at conc dot tds dot net

eats up CPU cycles, whereas a modem with a hardwired chip, like a rockwell,
or a Lucent or even a 3com (non winmodem) will perform all its functions on
the actual modem, not eating valuable CPU cycles.  GPL requires high
hardware specs to run nicely, and a winmodem will eat into that
significantly.

Give it a whirl

I have run a winmodem since the beginning... I get one of the best
connections of all those I know in the UK.

I do however make sure I easily get 36fps allllll the time when online,
hence the cpu cycles it uses aren't an issue.

Pretty much Everyone is having probs online with GPL 1.1 in some way or
another... so don't immediately assume any probs you have are with the
winmodem.

Marc Mercer

ps ... 1m10 isn't all that quick at the glen ... 1m07 - 1m08 would be an
ideal starting point. Maybe it is worth trying the eagle to bridge the gap
.. but avoid the lotus - it bites.

even at 1m10 you cannot go wrong if you are consistent so don't be put off.
Just make sure you keep an eye on the mirrors in practice and later in the
race and be courteous to the leaders. Also keep back at the start.. there is
likely to be carnage! ... your best bet is to get though in one piece :)

Anyway... you knew all this... you aren't a VROC lotus driver! :) hehehe

Most important of all - enjoy!! :)))

I can second that - I used a WinModem for several months, with pretty
good results, but when I decided to "upgrade" to a serial-port external
DynaMode modem (using the Rockwell chipset) the pings to all servers
immediately increased by around 200ms.

What's more, the original WinModem was *also* slower by 200ms!

I've a horrible feeling that once you've used a modem for anything, its
drivers stay active and slow down the machine from then on.

As an example, if I go online but decide that there's nothing much going
on and decide to race offline against the AI instead, I often find the
game slows down to a crawl and eventually the sound goes off.  If I then
press both mouse buttons simultaneously it starts working again (I think
this is some kind of "reset" operation in GPL).

I suspect that you need to create a "clean" startup configuration using
the methods described in r.a.s. some time ago, ie. creating an Emergency
Recovery file and using it to switch between a "clean" version of
Windows dedicated to GPL and the normal version.

Yet more hassle!

i too use a winmodem, despite all the advice and cries of "tear it out
and hit it with a hammer', it has served me well with no
problems...AFTER i set the following in CONTROL PANEL,
Modem/properties/connections/port settings:
slide both buffer bars to left (low (1))

smooth and problem free!
Bo Bruce

I never fails to fascinate me how much people will put up with until making
themselves heard and dump the pile of ***that has the name "Windows" on
it. I seriously doubt the existence of a "clean" version.

Alison's advice about winmodems is to "chuck them from the highest place
accessible" IIRC, and if you trust Eagle woman's setups, you might as well
trust her opinion on hardware related issues. ;-)

Luckily more and more games companies are porting to Linux. Maybe
even Sierra/Papy will see the light of day in the near future.

Regards,

Uwe

--
Uwe Schuerkamp http://www.racesimcentral.net/
Herford, Germany (52.0N/8h30mE)
Ever wondered what's wrong with the world? http://www.racesimcentral.net/
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