rec.autos.simulators

and that I am getting desperate at fixing
an evident conflict. Below are some steps I have tried to make it work
and some questions I still have :
I was offered this game for Christmas and soon experienced frequent
lock-ups. These lock-ups occured at any time, and not only (as I have
often read) in the menus or when there is a lot of activity such as a
crash). Because I read that Windows 98 was more stable I bought it, to
no avail. I reformatted my drive and reinstalled everything in the
following order :
1) Stealth G460
2) Diamond Monster
3) Direct X 6.0
4) Grand Prix Legends
It seemed to work for a short while, but the problem came back.
I was then told by Diamond, that heat maybe my problem. I bought 2 fans
from 3dfxcool and still... Then I was told to change my memory settings
for the Monster and set them 2 addresses higher than my AGP card
(Stealth). I did and even tried other "non conflicting adresses" but
this did not help either. Further to my third call to Diamond, I was
told to :
- Remove any occurence of the Monster in windows\others\inf
- Remove the Monster in Device Manager
- Change the Monster PCI slot and install the new drivers (1600)
Did not work either.
I have since my last phone call/e-mail with Sierra and Diamond got
Start-up Manager, software which allows me to close any application I
wish at Start up in order to avoid memory conflicts. Even if I close
everything (note that explorer can not be closed) the problem occurs.
At this time I doubt the problem comes from either the software or the
card but I would like someone to help me solve this problem ! The only
thing I can think of is that some drivers are reported by DxDiag (the
DirectX driver test program) as being non certified. These are the
Stealth driver (even though it is the latest posted version from
Diamond) and dd3dfx.drv.
Can this be the problem ? Even though both drivers are reported to be
WHQL why do they show as non certified and how do I get the certified
ones ?

If you have any suggestion I have not listed above, please let me know
ASAP.
Thanks.

I've heard that the earlier versions (pre DX6 - 2.53?) are more stable with
GPL than the new ones.

I'm running a Canopus Pure3D II (voodoo2 12mb) with the latest Canopus DX6
beta2 drivers, and GPL is completely stable for me. I know this is largely
due to Canopus writing damn good drivers, but if they can do it, there's no
reason why Diamond won't be able to eventually !

Mike West

3DNow! UK: www.3dnow.freeserve.co.uk

1) going to the garage/setup area then bringing up the Chat pad. (I
also see occasional crashes when calling up the chat pad when in the
Tracks pages before a session.)

2) disconecting from a server to change cars then re-connect. It will
crash before I can get to the change-car screen.

Both of those *always* cause a full-blown, cold-reboot type of radical
death.

I have a Monster3d 2 card, P2-300, 64 meg RAM, if that helps. And I
never see crashes when offline.

--
-Gunslinger-

 http://grandprix2.ga-sports.com/gpl/patches/glide2x_253.zip

MzzL
Jarno

Those I listed are the two reliable bugs- the ones I can always count
on. And it is notable that they happen at relatively quiet times for
the M3D2 board and the processor, I think.

of unreliable bugs- there aren't too many, but they always happen
online, never when I'm offline racing. And mostly to do with Chat pad.
I also get some spurious "want to take 10 minutes to re-calibrate
everything?!?" sorts of moments when starting online from VROC- which
means I just close GPL and restart it, and hope the race is still
available.

While I'm at it, here's a "feature" Papyrus should change, IMHO: when
discoed from a server, for whatever reason, please don't dump us at
the re-connect screen, leave us in the main race screen. Why? I for
one want to look at my tire temps, do a few tweaks for next race to
the setup, etc. It is immensely frustrating to be discoed... but to
not even be able to make the racing count for anything (.e., not being
able to tweak the setup or see lap times) doubles the frustration,
IMO. And, of course, I can't re-connect anyway if the race is already
underway! So the connect screen is no place to be, IMO.

Sorry I didn't catch that in my last reply.