CompuServe Messages

Hi Gary, I 'warned' you that I will return with a report concerning odd errors in animations rendered to GIF or TIF stills. Well, here I am <g>: Despite very excessive and extensive testing I haven't been able to put my finger on the responsible part of hardware/software. I tried various 3DS-Projects on various computers using various setups and I _always_ got errors, not only with GIFs and TIFs but also with Flics. One obvious reason why I didn't see errors in uncompressed file formats is that compression algorithms get very confused (to the point of crashing the system) if a bad byte occurs, whereas uncompressed pictures only show a miscolored pixel (which is quite hard to find in megabytes of information…). Used computers systems: – Pentium 90 EISA, Adaptec 2940W SCSI, various combinations of RAM modules from 16 MB up to 96 MB, Seagate 12450W 2HD, Hercules Dynamite Pro PCI – Intel 486 DX2/66 VLB, Adaptec Total Advantage VL SCSI/EIDE combo, various combinations of RAM modules from 16 MB up to 96 MB, Quantum LPS240AT, Quantum Lightning 730S, no name Tseng ET4000 W32 VLB video adapter – Intel 486 DX2/66 VLB, no name VLB IDE controller, 64 MB RAM, Quantum LPS240AT, Quantum LPS 270 AT, Elsa Winner 1000 VLB video adapter – Novell 3.12 Server Intel 486 DX2/66 VLB, Adaptec 1542 ISA, 32MB RAM, Fujitsu 1GB HD SCSI, DEC 1GB HD SCSI, no name ISA video adapter. Used setups: – Memory managers: QEMM 7.0 – 7.04, EMM386 from WfW 3.11, none – Network: connected to Ethernet (Novell 3.12 drivers, either master or slave mode), unconnected – various TSRs and driver programs activated or removed – 3DStudio Releases 3 and 4 All these tests resulted in errors. <SIGH!> One significant occurence is that frames located more to the beginning of an animation are less likely to be corrupted than frames further into the animation. One particular project which was rendered at least ten times never produced an error before frame 110 and then every fifth frame or so was bad. What could it possibly be that I'm overlooking? I can't believe that there are four completely different computers with exactly the same hardware fault. But I also can't believe that there's a bug in 3D Studio which seemingly only strikes at me and nobody else. After hundreds, maybe thousands (computer) hours of testing I'm beginning to get a bit weary and uninspired in inventing new tests. Maybe someone else is willing to try one of these projects (my favorite) on his own computer? Could the fault be project related? Is it my kismet to _not_ get flawless pictures? <g> Any help, suggestions etc are, as usual, appreciated. Volker