Hi guys,

I have an interesting (and very aggravating!) problem trying to run EAW 1.28e on my "old school" PC. Last year I bought a Dell Dimension XPS from a computer surplus store and got it running with Windows Me. I use this box to play all of my classic games and sims as it works great for this purpose. Specs are the following:

Intel Pentium III 450 Mhz CPU
256 MB RAM
ATI Xpert 98 8MB (AGP 2x)
2 x STB Black Magic Voodoo2 (12MB)
Sound Blaster Live

EAW worked fine as installed from the CD (version 1.0). I then patched the game to version 1.2 and it continued to run fine. Next I updated the installation to 1.28e and this is where things went awry! With Glide selected as my rendering device (using 1 Voodoo2 card) the game hangs as soon as I start an instant mission (the screen is black and I have to do a CTRL+ALT+DELETE to recover). Seems to work fine in software mode as well as in D3D mode on my ATI card. In all cases I cannot enable SLI as this will cause the game to hang regardless of the version (1.0, 1.2, 1.28e). I have tried two different voodoo2 drivers but the result is the same.

I would love to get this sim working with both Voodoo2 cards running in SLI. Any ideas would be appreciated!

Jiver67

Hi,

Google "Zeckensacks Glide Wrapper" and install and run it before you try EAW in Glide again.

Making some progress....

I uninstalled the Voodoo2 driver and removed both cards, reinstalled one card and the driver, rebooted, then reinstalled the second card. I rolled back my EAW installion from 1.28e to 1.2 and can now run the game at 1024x768 in Glide mode with SLI enabled. Very cool!!!

I then updated my installation again to 1.28e, ran the game, and encountered a hang up as soon as I started an instant mission (no black screen but immediate freeze). I killed the game via CTRL-ALT-DEL and attempted to restart it. No joy at all on the restart...just a black screen. Tried to restart the game several times and still continue to get a black screen. Very strange!

Guess I will have to be content with running 1.2 for now.

Hi,

did you try a single mission, instead of quick mission?

Greetings,

Knegel

After installing 1.28e I can only start the game one time. On subsequent attempts it hangs up before I get to the main menu. I'm beginning to think the 1.28e exe was coded to support only newer Nvidia and ATI cards.

Never thought to install a Glide wrapper on a PC that already has a 3Dfx card installed, but hey, it is worth a try. I'll try it and get back to you.

Thanks!

You also do not have to patch to 1.2
Copy the files from the EAW CD to a folder,
then patch that to 1.28e.
You can't 'rollback' to 1.2. You can only
start with a fresh pasting of 1.0. Many files get
overwritten and added when you patch to 1.28e.
The 1.2 patch is just an exe patch. The 1.28e patch
is an exe, many cdf files, and a couple .dll files.

Install the glidewrapper
Copy and paste the files from your CD to a folder
Patch to 1.28e

This should work for you.
(Also when you have two video-cards on one machine, you
should disable one, while you use the other.)
AO

AngleOff,

When I said "I rolled back to version 1.2" what I meant is that I have a backup copy of my 1.2 installation. So really all I did was delete my existing 1.28e EAW folder and copy the 1.2 version back to the empty folder. So in effect this gives me a clean 1.2 install, yes?

Your point is well taken about applying the 1.28e update directly over 1.0. I'm going to start fresh and try your recommendation.

Thanks!

Mike,

No joy with the Glide wrapper, still hangs up. I'm going to try what AngleOff just posted and see what happens.

Hi Jivers,

well it sounds to me as if the game is trying to set up the graphics for the 3d section of the game and running into a problem that then leaves your computer in a condition that initiates an immediate ctd if you restart the game. I know from the past that the game resets the graphics setting on your machine in preparation for the 3d section of the game, sometimes with 1.2 online if you ctd at that point in the game setup your machine is left with its graphics set to a low screen resolution, patticularly if you are in glide mode I seem to remember. Have you tried 1.28C ? this was the last of the 1.28 series before we tweaked the grpahics and went over to the 1028 x 768 screens so it may still work with glide... just a guess but it might give us an insight into what is happening.

One other thing... whenever I get a blackscreen on opening a mission I usually go to the savedata file and delete the default missions in there to see if they are a cause...

cheers,


Pobs

Hi Pobs,

The 1.28c patch works great with my 3dfx cards running in SLI. I am able to run the game at 1024x768 res with no issues at all. The frame rate is quite good with a limited number of planes in the air (30 fps) but drops down to the low teens when there are many bombers in the sky. This is to be expected on such an old PC. Overall I'm happy with the performance.

I have a third PC which I might setup for use with EAW as it has better (more modern) components and should work fine with 1.28e. I'm having fun experimenting.

Thanks to all for your assistance!

Jiver67