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"Doggonit I'm tired of hitting the black hole"

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asmith46 (47 posts)
Apr-28-02, 01:45 AM (EDT) "Doggonit I'm tired of hitting the black hole" If nobody answers this post I'll understand. I'm not asking a question anyway, just letting off some steam. I am SICK and TIRED of having to hit the reset button with a ball-point pen (my best choice) which has made an easy dark target on the face of my cpu box (hence the name black hole, due to.... etc.) This has become SOP for me and MSTS if I want to do anything besides the default routes and consists.. Yes I use Route Control and Con Builder. Things would be even more horrible if I didn't. I think I'll go back to EA's Janes Fleet Command, or Panzer General, just to blow some stuff up. Grrrrrrrrrrr. This is getting to me. Is it possible that the richest man in the world could stoop low enough to make sure his customers were actually satisfied with one of his products on second release,, or is he going to keep releasing not-quite-ready-for-prime-time software as long as he can get away with it just because he dominaates the market? I'm tired of being his beta-tester, AND paying him for the privilige BTW, as is the entire world. There are alternitives, and it looks like many of you here might know them well. I don't, but I'm willing to listen. Thanks to you guys for putting up with my whine here. WAAAAAAAAAAAH -------->Al Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
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Subject Author Message Date ID RE: Doggonit I'm tired of hitting t... Richard Apr-28-02 1 RE: Doggonit I'm tired of hitting t... kevarc Apr-28-02 2 RE: Doggonit I'm tired of hitting t... georgi55 Apr-28-02 3 RE: Doggonit I'm tired of hitting t... enocell Apr-28-02 4 RE: Doggonit I'm tired of hitting t... ohmcno Apr-28-02 5 RE: Doggonit I'm tired of hitting t... rpicardi1 Apr-28-02 6 A word of advice from Mr. Cautious! DTA Apr-28-02 7 RE: A word of advice from Mr. Cauti... asmith46 Apr-29-02 8 RE: A word of advice from Mr. Cauti... sniper297 Apr-30-02 9 RE: A word of advice from Mr. Cauti... charliechan Apr-30-02 10 RE: A word of advice from Mr. Cauti... sniper297 May-01-02 11 RE: A word of advice from Mr. Cauti... rjdiii May-01-02 12

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Richard (160 posts)
Apr-28-02, 09:37 AM (EDT) 1. "RE: Doggonit I'm tired of hitting the black hole" Al,
If I understand your post correctly, you're saying the default routes work OK, but the add-on routes you have lock up your computer. Have you tried contacting the route creator explaining your problems, there might be a problem with the route the creator does not know about.Rich S. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
kevarc (710 posts)
Apr-28-02, 12:29 PM (EDT) 2. "RE: Doggonit I'm tired of hitting the black hole" What are your computer specs? It helps to know.Kevin Arceneaux Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
georgi55 (776 posts)
Apr-28-02, 12:46 PM (EDT) 3. "RE: Doggonit I'm tired of hitting the black hole" I completely agree. MSTS is one of most buggiest thing released by microsoft for last few years. (oh, Don't forget WinMe)
If it is brought up to FS2002 standart of stability, then I have no complanints to be a beta tester.
BTW, if you go to FS2002 Insider by Zone, you will see how MS almost cleary said that we ARE beta testers.
(not exaclty the word, but that's what they ment by context)
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enocell (612 posts)
Apr-28-02, 03:22 PM (EDT) 4. "RE: Doggonit I'm tired of hitting the black hole" You are so right, unfortunately. I don't like the way they "update" their operating systems. And they will stop supporting Win98 when there's finally machines which can run it smoothly. The 98SE is even quite stable, except it won't shut down properly(and I have installed the fix). What if cars would have to shutdown by removing the gas tank because ignition keys wouldn't work...I'm quite sure that I won't buy XP, as it wouldn't run fast enough for me.
My 180MHz Mac from 1996 starts much faster and feels faster than 1400MHz pc with Win2k, and it took 17 seconds to start it when I had the original OS in it(compared to ~3 mins with Win2k).Enocell Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ohmcno (117 posts)
Apr-28-02, 03:30 PM (EDT) 5. "RE: Doggonit I'm tired of hitting the black hole" LAST EDITED ON Apr-28-02 AT 03:31 PM (EDT)My 667mhz G4 (loaded!) boots in a speed very close to my 1.4ghz AthlonXP/WinXP Professional...and much quicker than when I was running 98...the Mac feels quicker too-- Michael MacFall --

http://nalw.macfall.com Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
rpicardi1 (60 posts)
Apr-28-02, 03:51 PM (EDT) 6. "RE: Doggonit I'm tired of hitting the black hole" LAST EDITED ON Apr-28-02 AT 04:00 PM (EDT)Here's the experience I had with my custom system until I got the bugs out.
Graphic card was sluggish and would lock up unexpectly - An on line search to the mfg led to some changes being made to the BIOS that fixed it. The card was designed for DMA access and didn't like the extra buffering steps that the default installation of Windows had set up.
Slow HD and CD-RW - Changed settings here to DMA access vastly improved performance.
Keep in mind that those fixes are specific for my AMD computer and your system may require something different. You play with the BIOS at your own risk.
When you run MSTS, it helps if all other un-needed background programs are shut down. How many utilities, reminders, task managers, and other resource using utilities are running in the background. MS Office installs tons of those (useless) background tasks that you can easily disable without affecting how Word or Excell functions.
MSTS will multitask as it is a Windows program. But, it will run much better if it has all of the resources available for it.
I run 98SE. It appears to be more stable then ME and the other so called fixes. (Don't know about that new resource hog and snoop system Windows Xtra Picky. It's better if you have a new system with this installed then upgrading an existing system.)
Some of those new routes may be requiring more resources due to their use of custom shapes and textures. This could be putting a strain on your system resources or maybe its something that triggers a crash that the default routes don't.
When you find that you can recreate a crash at a specific point, you may have something that you can pass on to a route builder or someone on this forum may have a fix for you.Keep working on it and use the latest drivers. Sooner or later, you will squash the bug - s causing the problem.SRV Ron

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DTA (553 posts)
Apr-28-02, 07:40 PM (EDT) 7. "A word of advice from Mr. Cautious!" I don't install any of Microsofts babies until they have been around for at least 6 months. And I still get problems, but at least the major ones are out of the way. I am still on Windows98SE as it is the best version ever made, and I have got used to IE6's little quirks. LOL!It is the same with activities and routes to download here. I tend to wait and see if people have problems before I download stuff. I always trust Rich Garber's routes and TA's trains because they have never been found wanting, plus they have a simple install. Likewise, the Unterland and PO and N routes and activities. My favourite install, as mentioned before, has got to be Torbens activity changer, which makes the playing of activities much more realistic.David Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
asmith46 (47 posts)
Apr-29-02, 11:27 PM (EDT) 8. "RE: A word of advice from Mr. Cautious!" LAST EDITED ON Apr-29-02 AT 11:32 PM (EDT)Thanks to all you folks for some good responses. Kevin, my system is not so new, its a 866meg PIII, 128meg RAM, 32meg nVidia TNT, running Win98se, about 20 months old. BIOS is American Megatrends dated 10/03/00, don't know if it will update or not. I have updated my vid card to driver version 2311 which many here seem to think works best with MSTS. I think its true that many add-on routes have extra textures and more objects that cause me problems, but they are great and I'm not going to miss out on them. I also like the idea of disabling all the startup programs before starting TrainSim, but shouldn't I leave anti-virus and the firewall active, since I use a cable connection? And some of them don't have an EXIT option on their properties menu (the ones in the system tray, I mean.) I wouldn't want to disable all of them with msconfig, and restart, then have to remember to reset the ones I want and restart again after TrainSim. Anyway, thanks for all your help, and I'll keep tweaking to the limits of my safety zone - some things I'll NEVER touch. And if I do, I hope I made plenty of backups first! -------->Al
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sniper297 (2118 posts)
Apr-30-02, 00:11 AM (EDT) 9. "RE: A word of advice from Mr. Cautious!" Upgrading your RAM is the cheapest and best choice, with enough available you don't have to worry about exiting from the internet or shutting down programs before starting trainsim. It is buggy as hell, and most microsoft games are extremely fussy even if they don't have bugs. It makes any microsoft game a very useful tool for finding the least instability in a system that runs other programs just fine!
BTW, my youngest son has an ASUS A7V (VIAtech chipset) with a GEFORCE 2 GTS/PRO 64mb AGP card, and I found that Nvidia 21.81 is the latest version that will run stable for trainsim, and the "sweet spot" for the AGP aperture setting is 32mb. It's some combination of the VIA chipset with the Nvidia cards and AMD processors, I forget exactly what, but 21.81 is the last version that had no problems with that combination.
I currently have an ASUS A7A-266 in mine, which has the Ali-Magik chipset, so I can run the latest Nvidia drivers with no problems. Anybody needs 21.81 and it ain't available any more, just holler and I'll email it to you, if you can take a 3.7 meg attachment. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
charliechan (51 posts)
Apr-30-02, 06:06 PM (EDT) 10. "RE: A word of advice from Mr. Cautious!" Good Morning Sniper:I would like to try 21.81 if you would email it to me atcbaer@sisna.comMy system is a PIII 866
Win 98se
Gforce 3 ti 500
256 ramI just upgraded to the gforce 3 from a gforce 2mx and thought I would see an improvement, no such luck as a matter of fact I have seen a decrease in fps. When I installed the card the computer ran great except for the sim, it would not load, it would act like it was in continous loop. I was running the latest 4in1 via upgrade and I dont think my chipset supports the 4in1, so I reinstalled the ones that come with the computer and then loade the latest from Nvida, 28.32, and the sim will run but poorly. I realize that I need to upgrade more on my computer but I thought I would get a little bit of a frame rate improvment from the new card. Any ideas.Thanks Chandler Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (2118 posts)
May-01-02, 12:20 PM (EDT) 11. "RE: A word of advice from Mr. Cautious!" You got mail.
I don't know if this will solve your problems, like I said it's the combination of VIAtech chipset, Nvidia chipset, and AMD CPU that caused the problem I was talking about. You didn't mention the motherboard and you said you had a P-3, I dunno if Intel does the same or not. The VIA 4 in 1 shouldn't even install unless you have a VIA chipset tho, so it's a pretty good bet your mobo has the VIA Apollo KT-133. One thing to keep in mind is that you have to go thru the agony of uninstall/re-install with a lot of this stuff to make it work correctly, boot in safe mode, remove video card drivers completely, then install the 21.81. And, don't forget to run mprofile in the trainsim troubleshooter to wake the sim up to the new driver after installing! The other problem is the BIOS setup, most computers you have to hold down the delete key while booting to bring the screen up, then you have to go to the advanced, chipset options. The AGP aperture has to be set for the system, I've heard a lot of "rule of thumb" opinions, but half the video memory seems to work best. In other words for a 64mb card, set the AGP aperture to 32mb. The other things are dependent on which BIOS you have, but "AGP 4x enabled" and the "boot with AGP or PCI video first" stuff also needs to be set. On the ASUS A7V/GEFORCE 2 GTS/AMD Athlon/Win98SE combination I had all the trouble with, the "sweet spot" for the AGP aperture is 32mb, anything more is unstable for some reason. www.tomshardware.com is a good place for tweaking tips & tricks, and if a total disaster happens, shut all the way down and boot up from cold iron, hold down the delete key to get into the BIOS setup screen, then select "load BIOS defaults" will get you back to a working system which will have to be tweaked afterwards. Then there's the video options, right clicking on the desktop and bringing up the advanced menu takes you to the nvidia settings, and when you install a new driver the Direct 3D settings will adjust to a default setting that's going to be a little different for each card.
For the most part default settings in the display menu and in trainsim after running mprofile will be best quality, so upgrading the video card will initially have a bigger effect on quality than on framerates. Going from a GEFORCE 2 MX to a GEFORCE 3 Ti should have a dramatic impact on both, tho, so something on yours definitely needs adjustment.The last thing is your hard disk, a 7200 rpm ATA-100 hard disk loads objects from disk into memory a hell of a lot faster than a 5400 rpm drive, so if your hard disk ain't up to the task, a super fast CPU with a screamer video card will give you great FPS, then stop and stutter for a few seconds while it's waiting for data from the disk to be loaded into RAM. Whichever type you have, the thing that helps the most is defragging the hard disk so the sim don't have to hunt all over the disk for the files it's trying to load, and varous things like cacheman can also help. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
rjdiii (69 posts)
May-01-02, 07:19 PM (EDT) 12. "RE: A word of advice from Mr. Cautious!" Going from a GeForce 2 to a Geforce 3 with anything less than a 1Ghz+ processor isn't going to get you anything. The system can't pump data to the video card fast enough. A GeForce 3 Ti500 can soak all the data up to about a 2Ghz processor can push and then you get to GeForce 4 territory.And the newer drivers are tweaked for the newer cards. So using the newer drivers with a 2 year old card is likely to be counterproductive or at best a zero sum. Going from a GeForce3 ti500 to a GeForce4 4600 with an Athlon 1800 got me nothing but some improved (but still noticeably lacking - still hasn't done away with the moire' effect on the track ahead) antialiasing.Richard Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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