#Pentium Help Needed
4 messages in this thread
Dear Jonas:
We have 4 re-occuring problems rendering on our pentium machines:
1. Bad MTL Num in Do_smooth
2. Pentiums continually hang in transforming objects. (Escape almost always is
responded to, but no error message is given as to why the project didn't
render.
3. Flic files almost always render corrupted when the machines do decide to
finish rendering.
4. Pentiums continually hang when counting colors with any palatte setting.
These problems do not happen on any of our 486 machines. I've tried
re-installing 3D Studio version 3 and version 4 from the original disks several
times with no effect. These problems happen whether I send the projects over
from the network to the pentium slave _or_ try rendering stand alone on the
pentiums.
Also I've taken out _all_ drivers in the pentiums with the exception of the
mouse driver. I ran Norton utilities ver 8.0 on the machines which show no
hardware conflicts. All other tasks appear to be fine other than the ones
listed above.
The machines are configured as follows:
Duel Pentium 100 MHz w/ 1. Processor chip installed.
64 MB Parity Ram, 512K Cache
MS Dos 6.22 w/ Novell Netware Lite ver. 1.1
Number 9 Vision 330 PCI w/ 2MB Dram
Adaptec 1742 SCSI Controller
Quantum SCSI 4.2 GIG Hard Drive
CNET CN650E (Novell 2000 Compatible) Network Card
Microsoft Mouse and Driver
Novell Netware Lite ver. 1.1 (Updated 8-10-95)
That's it. Nothing else is in the machines other that 3D Studio and we've tried
all the latest versions. Both machines are exactly the same, and were built by
me.
Please help us if you can. We've got things to render and deadlines are getting
closer by the minute. 🙂
…Earl
AFTER RENDERING ON MANY PENT@ HAVE NEVER FOUND ANY PROBLEMS
"1. Bad MTL Num in Do_smooth" "2. Pentiums continually hang in transforming
objects."
Hi Earl, you've got a few problems that may be resolved by a clean boot.
The Transforming objects hang is something we've encountered before, and sounds
like you're booting with a POWER.EXE line in your CONFIG.SYS. If not – the
culprit may be some other "green" feature of your computer. That first error
though is not as familiar. Can you render any of our sample .3DS files? Or
does this error come only with a particular file, no matter which machine it's
rendered on? It might be a corrupted file. The "MTL" refers to Material, and
it looks as though it's having trouble being applied because of some illegal
condition for a smoothing group. Have you been adjusting smoothing groups on
this model? Hopefully you can narrow down your problem to a specific piece of
geometry and remedy the situation.
"3. Flic files almost always render corrupted when the machines do decide to
finish rendering." If you follow the clean boot above (also, you might be
interested in our FAX Information doc "Clean Booting with 3D Studio" – call
415/507-5595. It's document # 823) you should also run CHKDSK /F or SCANDISK
before starting 3D Studio. Check for Lost Allocation Units or other
corruptions, and correct them. Also, make a note of disk space. If you have
Flic problems, they can sometimes be related to disk space. A High Palette
setting can eat up a lot of disk space. So try rendering a small test flic,
low palette. If the corruption doesn't seem to be related to disk space, I'm
not sure what to suggest. Make sure you have the latest Vibrant drivers, make
sure you aren't paging to disk, make sure your swap file is directed to the
right (most available space) drive. Again, plain boot, try a sample like
Aquarium.3DS.
"4. Pentiums continually hang when counting colors with any palatte setting."
The way you've phrased these problems makes me think you're suspicious of the
Pentiums. You might be right. Disable all the advanced features in CMOS (like
cache) and see if your tests now work.
There is nothing specifically wrong with Pentiums that we know about. There
are reports of specific machines that fail when the manufacturer tries to
duplicate the acustomer's problem.
Let us know the latest.
Hi Nik!
Thanks for replying so quickly. We're looking at your suggestions…
…Earl