#disk writes cause crash
12 messages in this thread
Jonas,
This is going to you because I'm confused. I have sent several forum messages
on my disk crashing problem. One addressed to "all" and one addressed to
"Adesk". I have gotten some replys from individuals trying to help (with some
valid suggestions) but no reply from anyone identifying themselves as Adesk.
Has the support policy changed while I've been away? How do I get support for
3ds r3?
Thanks,
Steve
Hi Steve,
<< Has the support policy changed while I've been away? >>
If you would review the AMMEDIA news flash, you'll notice that indeed there's a
bit of change. Basically, Brian, Nik and myself are being spread pretty thin
with respect to the new products that are being developed in house. With this
in mind, here's a snippet from the news flash…
FORUM ASSISTANTS ANNOUNCED ON AMMEDIA FORUM
We are very fortunate in the AMMEDIA Forum to have a talented group of members
who have agreed to be Forum Assistants (FAs) and take on a more formal role in
answering questions posted here. As always, Brian Rudolph (71722,170), Nik
Grant ( 70421,76) and Jonas Ruikis (73172,1351) and others will maintain
Autodesk's presence here.
Below is a list of the FAs and the sections in which they will have primary
message duties. Some sections have several FAs assigned since they are the
busiest for messaging. Continue to address your general questions to
ALL but don't be suprised when one of these FAs answers you!
Section Forum Assistant (FA) UID
2 – 3D Studio David Marks 72172,1036
Dave Mennenoh 71561,2343
Robert Ritger 73041,3173
3 – Hardware Greg Pyros 73027,3632
Robert Ritger 73041,3173
Ted Boardmann 71022,3001
Steve:
>> I have sent several forum messages on my disk crashing problem.
>> One addressed to "all" and one addressed to "Adesk". I have gotten
>> some replys from individuals trying to help (with some valid
>> suggestions) but no reply from anyone identifying themselves as Adesk.
Since you obviously had responses with valid suggestions, why do you want an
official response from Autodesk? Are their valid answers more valid than
anyone else's? <bg> Seriously, I know that if I see a good response to a
message, I won't spend time or message slots here answering the same question,
and I'm sure the others feel the same way.
Now if a question went unanswered, you would have a reason to gripe, but you
yourself said that you got some valid answers…
Greg Pyros
Greg,
My point is the following,
I appreciate help from anyone when I am stuck. However, I made the assumption
(perhaps incorrect) that there are things that Adesk knows about 3ds that is
not general knowledge. Example: Someone suggested that the Phar Lap extender
is very sensitive to various controllers and disk drives. Is that really true?
Or is that someones perception based on a third hand overheard experience?
I can't tell you the funny things I've read on this forum about processors that
I know for a fact are not true, yet people really believe based on
misunderstood personal experience.
Having worked as an FAE for Intel for 7 years I understand the product support
issues involved here very well. And I do want Adesk to be profitable and
continue to turn out software that I can earn a living with. I just felt that
the support came up a little short this time. Maybe I'm too sensitive to their
side of it and I am frustrated because I have already spent 5 days on the
problem before I even asked for help.
Anyway, enough nabobs of negativism, (How did Spiro Agnew spell it?)
1. Is it true that the Phar Lap extender is sensitive to controllers?
2. Are there any known problems with the combination of the Intel Triton chip
set, the Intel 82371FB and the AMI BIOS?
3. Is anyone using the Super Micro P55CMA board and having disk problems.
4. Is there anything else I can do to isolate the problem?
I have an external PCI IDE card coming in tomorrow. That is just a blind lets
try it effort. I also have another Mboard coming in Monday. Although I also
feel that that is another blind try.
Thank for listening, and any help you can offer.
Steve
Steve:
>> However, I made the assumption (perhaps incorrect) that there
>> are things that Adesk knows about 3ds that is not general knowledge.
I have found that using this forum is usually a better way of finding out
information than any other. I have also found that anything Autodesk knows to
help users out, they are happy to tell you here on the forum. Any since many
users have been here for years absorbing all this info, many of them can give
you the same information that Autodesk could.
>> 1. Is it true that the Phar Lap extender is sensitive to controllers?
If there is any problem with a controller, Phar Lap will find it when it starts
to page.
>> 2. Are there any known problems with the combination of the Intel Triton
>> chip set, the Intel 82371FB and the AMI BIOS?
I am using Triton and AMI on 9 motherboards here in the office with no
problems.
>> 3. Is anyone using the Super Micro P55CMA board and having disk problems.
Can't help you with that one, mine is so generic there is no name on it at all!
But it works fine.
>> 4. Is there anything else I can do to isolate the problem?
Sounds like the hardware swapping you are doing will enable you to figure it
out. Post your results when you get the new hardware! I'd start with the disk
controller, personally.
Greg Pyros
Well, here I am back again. Same place, same problem.
I can't swap the onboard controller with an external PCI EIDE yet. That type
of board is very rare since all boards now have them built in. What was
shipped to us turned out to not be what we were looking for. However, I did
swap out the motherboard and the problem continues.
I am going to try a different brand of motherboard tomorrow. Since others on
this forum are using Supermicro mb's it is hard to believe that that is going
to do anything. But I will try.
Could there be any memory management issues that I could do anything about by
playing with cfig386? That thing is mostly Greek (No offense) to me.
Steve:
>> Could there be any memory management issues that I could do anything
>> about by playing with cfig386?
Probably not. Like I said, look for a new controller!
>> That thing is mostly Greek (No offense) to me.
None taken! I've used the phrase myself, and I can read Greek!
Greg Pyros
Greg,
I believe I've found the problem. I've swapped all hardware. Nadda! Do to
poor troubleshooting procedure on my part I've been testing all my changes with
the same .3ds file. I believe that at some point 2 weeks ago this file was
corrupted. All following work done was derived from this grandfather file.
In my original posting on the forum I described how a small .3ds did not have a
problem but a larger one did. That was probably the last testing I did with a
small .3ds file.
I have found that when the number of vertices exceeds 64k I crash! And it
doesn't do it gracefully. Sometimes I get hung in rendering, sometimes I can't
write to disk, sometimes I get Pharlap errors, and sometimes I don't.
Wanna bet that in 3ds r3 the counter for number of vertices is an unsigned
short (16 bit variable) that doesn't always get checked?!? I have created a
new .3ds from scratch and can run reliably on my system until vertices goes
over 64k.
Can you.verify this for me so if I'm right and 3ds does stomp all over itself,
I can keep an eye on "vertices".
Thanks,
Steve.
Steve:
>> I have found that when the number of vertices exceeds 64k I crash!
We have successfully rendered many projects with hundreds of thousands of
vertices with no problems. However no single _object_ can have more than 64k
verts! Could that be your problem? Just break it into pieces optimize it, and
weld it back together.
Greg Pyros
Greg,
I'm sorry but we haven't found the solution to my problem yet.
I don't have 64k verts for a single object but rather 64k total divided amoung
maybe 6 objects.
I have run this stuff on two very different machines with the only thing in
common being 32Meg of RAM. One is a 486 the other pentium, one has onboard EIDE
the other offboard IDE. It crashes the same way on both.
I also ran down the street and ran it on a friends Compaq with 40 meg of RAM
and it ran just fine. We came back to my office with her disks and
reinstalled, it crashed!
I really don't know what to try next. One minute it looks like my machines yet
they are so different it is hard to believe. I never got to try the offboard
EIDE controller. The one that came in was bogus and we have not been able to
locate another.
The funny thing is I can't send you the file because as soon as I create it I
can't move it because my machine has crashed and won't save to disk.
The way I have tested it on all three of these machines is to build an object
with 10k verts and copy it to the machine, then copy object till I have enough
to crash. By the way it is crashing with less than 64k verts. (39k will
usually do it)
Any ideas?
Steve
Steve:
>> Any ideas?
If your disk is OK, it must be the controller.
Greg Pyros
Greg,
I'm gonna try anything. Could you explain something to me. I have two boxes
one has the Intel IDE controller, another has a clone. One is onboard the
other isn't. One is a vl-bus the other is PCI. I have even tried two different
PCI mboards. There are guys on this forum using the same Triton set mboard.
Is it possible that with everybody's stuff working, I happen to get three bad
mboards as far as 3ds is concerned? Is there nothing with cfig386 that might
help? ( I am looking for another controller!)
Thanks,
Steve