From heller@ee.fit.edu  Mon Jan 16 15:56:59 1995
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Date: Mon, 16 Jan 1995 09:57:42 -0500 (EST)
From: Peter Heller <heller@ee.fit.edu>
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To: Aria Mailing List <aria@WI.LeidenUniv.NL>
Subject: Re: Aria posting on "alt.games.doom" NewsGroup 
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On Sun, 15 Jan 1995, ""Ethan J. Rasiel"" wrote:

> I have also had problems on some dos programs.  The Wing Commander III demo
> skips sound every 5 seconds (playing off the hard drive).  The Killing Moon
> demo is very scratchy.  The STTNG A Final Unity demo cdrom is also very 

I have had problems with all three games as well, but I might know why
these things occur.  I originially had the problem with the Killing Moon
demo not working at all.  I called tech support and they told me that it
was my Cyrix 486D-40 CPU that was incompatible with the DOS-Extender and
that I had to download a new version from their (long-distance) BBS.  I
knew it wasn't just the extender because that version had worked for in
other games.  I downloaded the file anyways and it fixed my problem.  Now
when I hear "popping" when I play the demo.  Another call to tech support
reveals that the game is incompatible with certain graphics cards, namely
my Cirrus GD-5426.  I didn't feel like downloading another fix for a game
I didn't even like.  The ST demo "popped" as well, until I chose the lower
resolution to play it in.  This told me it was probably the graphics card
again.  As for WC3, I could not get it to work at all with my CPU.  Tech
support confirmed this for me that it was incompatible and probably too
slow anyways.  I WAS able to get the demo to run in both OS/2 Warp 3.0 and
M$-Windows 3.1.  After tweaking the DOS settings in OS/2 for the demo.  It
finally ran (with none of the hardware exceptions that I got from straight
DOS).  I had to choose either SB digital or GMIDI music--I chose SB
digital because the only MIDI in the game was in flight sequences, and I
wanted to see the video with sound.  But I did notice the video pausing
(not skipping because it finished whatever sound had playing after the
pause was finished), every five seconds.  The playable demo was too slow
for me to play in OS/2, even in VGA mode.  Just for the hell of it I tried
the demo from Windows as well.  When I allocated as much memory as the
demo wanted in the PIF-file (my swap file + main memory), the game paused
again but this time for much longer time periods.  I then allocated only
8MB to the game and it ran.  It actually ran smoother that it did in 
OS/2, but the pausing every five seconds was still there, just the pauses 
weren't as long.  The game portion was actually playable now (in VGA).  
One other plus that I saw:  the setup program saw my Mitsumi 4x CD-ROM drive 
as a single, double, or triple (random) from OS/2, but now it showed as a 
4x in Windows.  After all this, I went back and loaded miditsr2 and chose 
GMIDI for music.  No more pauses-no digital sound either so that sucked.  
It seems that either my computer can't handle that amount of SB digital 
with video running at the same time _OR_ there's something strange with 
my Aria16se.  Anyone with ideas on this?
Later.
Peter

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/ Peter Heller               _/
_/ heller@ee.fit.edu          _/
_/ Electrical Engineering     _/		
_/ Florida Tech               _/                                     
_/ Melbourne, FL              _/
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/



