#Lantastic 3DS Problem
30 messages in this thread
I recently bought a 10 user Lantastic 6.0. I have reduced the network down to
two computers until I can identify the source of this problem.
Here's the setup – computers A and B. Start rendering 3DS on computer A; issue
a DIR command from computer B to look at computer A's hard drive (or any drive
on computer A). My 3DS crashes every time (I may have to issue the command 5
or 6 times). If I blindly type in MODE CO80 I can get back the dos prompt, and
if I redirect the error message I get a Page Fault error. It happens on either
computer.
I can run any other software package in DOS or WIN, and issue a DIR to the
other computer all day with no problems. Tech support at Lantastic seems to
think that because the DIR command is the communication, it has to be
associated with INTR 21, and QEMM is causing the page fault. I'm not sure
where Phar Lap fits in.
Hardware: Gateway P5-60 and P5-100, both with 64M RAM, 2G HD, CD-ROMs. Intel
EtherExpress Pros. I'm running Lantastic, Intel, CD-ROM, and QEMM 7.5 all with
the latest patches. I've talked to tech support at Artisoft, Quarterdeck, DPS,
Intel, and viewed all BBS and Forum messages. I've tried QEMM and EMM with all
the switches. I've excluded all and loaded high and low, I've changed all
INTRs, I've removed hardware, I've gone through the QEMM troubleshooting
flowcharts. I have been told by all the above tech support that I have done
and tried all the right things.
I can successfully setup 3DS4 to network render all the slaves. I can save the
files over the network on the specified drive. Everything works fine, except
that one intermittent time when one computer talks to the other.
I would greatly appreciate if someone running Lantastic would try this, I've
been working on this problem for over 100 hours now. I think Lantastic has a
30 day guarantee, so I am considering switching to Novell (I'm just not
convinced the problem is in the network).
Thanks to all.
Byron,
I just have a five license pack of Lantastic 6.0 but I can do a DIR with no
problem. Sometimes if the system which is rendering is outputting the images
locally there's a small delay, and the DIR doesn't scroll quite as quickly, but
other than that, it works fine. Can't imagine what your problem could be except
maybe some kind of timing thing. Do you have the clocks synchronized?
Interesting that one is a 50 and one is a 100. One machine is internally
running twice as fast as the other. I don't know why this would make any
difference. A comparitive analogy would be a DX33 and a P5-66 but you don't
often see that arrangement either. Its a long shot, but in your questioning of
Lantastic tech support, you might ask if anyone has heard of a problem arising
from it.
John
John,
Thanks for the reply. The machine running 3DS needs to be rendering or playing
the keyframer. I don't see it if 3DS is just sitting there. I'm guessing if
3DS is sitting idle, the problem is still there, just more intermittent.
I would expect my system to act like yours – if the 3DS system is rendering,
the other computer sees a delay. I have a batch file that I run to sync the
clocks before I run 3DS. The network cards are running at there normal slow
pace, so I don't think the speed difference of the machines makes a difference.
I even went out and bought new lan cards – I had EtherExpress 16 and bought the
PRO/10s. The Intel EtherExpress PRO/100 PCI lan cards are out, running at 100
Mbps – think I'll trade up.
Doing the DIR test is a test to expose the problem. I can still render over
the network, it's just the fact that sooner or later in the middle of the night
the master computer is going to crash. I assume the only communication between
the two computers is the slave accessing the master network control file.
Since both systems have two 1G drives, they are self contained – I have all 3DS
files local, and render to local.
The way I use the system now is this – run 3DS on both computers without the
network, load the network and transfer the files to one hard drive, unload the
network and transfer to PAR. Hey, it beats using floppies. Now what was that
cayenne pepper trick…
Thanks again.
Byron
Byron,
>>run 3ds… load network…unload… <<
Sounds like a hassle. I like the idea of the 100 Mbps cards. Intel on Intel
should work pretty well. I could use the speed as well.
>> Now what was that cayenne pepper trick… <<
Sounds like Cajun Voodoo…. I'd give it a try. <g>
John
Byron,
<<The Intel EtherExpress PRO/100 PCI lan cards are out, running at 100 Mbps –
think I'll trade up.>>
We had the same idea — in fact we were ready to go to town: a $250 100Mbs
Ethernet Card — Wow! Sounds too good to be true!!! …. It is too good to be
true… Sadly, while the cards are cheap, the only hub that will work with the
Intel cards is by Synoptics and starts at $16,000. (No, I didn't misplace a
digit, and yes, this was twice confirmed by Intel…) :(…
On your Lantastic woes:
We recently had a loaner Compaq SystemPro P60 that we tried to run as both
backup server and slave… Sadly, the beast crashed to DOS whenever we wrote
files to the machine over the network… at least it didn't hang itself! (I
think that we were using QEMM 7.0 as a memory manager.)
–Donald
Donald,
Thanks for the info on the Intel Pro/100 cards. I was getting ready to look
into that myself this week.
Also thanks for the Lantastic news. It's very been very costly and
frustrating. It's also very difficult to analyze with all of the hardware and
software parties involved. I've been happy with the various tech support
except DPS. They informed me that they've never tried testing the PAR on a
Lantastic network. They told me that if I was having a problem doing
something, then I shouldn't do that (remember the joke – doctor, it hurts when
I do this…).
I would send my computer to any of the involved parties to analyze if someone
would take some engineering responsibility. I've stripped my computer of
hardware and software, so I think the problem is between 3DS, PharLap, and
Lantastic. I think that Intel makes the Gateway motherboard, so I'm kind of
hoping that the problem isn't in hardware.
byron
engineering arts
Byron,
Are you running SERVER.EXE on the same machine(s) that you are using as slaves?
We've been having our own new, wild Lantastic problems with the PAR. With
PARDRV installed, TGAs copied off our server to our PAR workstation are
corrupted, and each time one is copied, the PAR board goes through gyrations.
We also unable to open TGAs on the server… I am confident that our dealer,
NW Tech, will soon find us a fix.
–Donald
PMJI>> Donald, I have found some of the same problems. Here are some of my
conclusions with my system, I am using Lantastic 5.0 w/1-486 66mhz as the
server 3-P90's as workstations with the PAR on one of them and all are using
SCSI interface. I have found that with the PAR software loaded that I can not
copy files from any other drive on the server but the C-Drive. I have tried
from the PAR and also from DOS with no luck. So far I have not found a solution
but to render to the local drives or keep all of the files on the servers
C-Drive. This has been confirmed on other server/workstations using the PAR and
Lantastic.
Let me know if this is the same for you also. Maybe we need to let DPS know
about this one.
Mike Morgan, CAD Forms Inc.
P.S. When I was running all of my machines as servers I do not recall this to
be a problem!
Mike,
That sounds just like my situation, though I haven't tried pulling files from
the Server C: yet… Bummer…
–Donald
Mike;
>> I am using Lantastic 5.0 w/1-486 66mhz as the server
I don't have a solution for you, I'm just taking notes on what works, and what
doesn't.
May I ask how much ram you have on your 486 as a server?
Thanks,
Dennis
Dennis,
I am using my server in the DOS mode only and it has 8 megs of ram. Have you
tried to do the copy from the C-Drive of the server yet. I have tried it both
ways – to the PAR systems main directory from the servers D-Drive and from the
PAR systems main directory to the servers D-Drive – with no avail. At this
point the C-Drive is large enough to handle about 1400 frames and that has been
O.K. for the moment. So I have not tried to trouble shoot this one right now
and I have been buried in work. If anything comes up I will drop you a note.
Mike Morgan, CAD Forms Inc.
>> I have not tried to…shoot this one
I've already tried it. It doesn't fix the problem, but it makes you feel a
whole lot better. Kind of reminds me of Elvis, HUH!
Donald:
>> I am confident that our dealer, NW Tech, will soon find us a fix.
They better! Or tell Dan & Oma that I'm coming up there to give them a talking
to! <bg>
Greg Pyros
Thanks for the support Greg! <BG>
–Donald
Donald,
>> Are you running SERVER.EXE on the same machine(s) that you are using as
slaves?
I've got all machines set up running as servers. I have a collection of
printers, scanners, dat back-up, etc. spread over all the computers and want
total access. I can get the network operation I expected with any other dos or
win application, except 3DS. Do you recommend setting up with one server and
the rest slaves?
I would appreciate any info you can pass on between the PAR and Lantastic. I
had the same corruption problems and never did get it figured out. Here's
another weird thing I hope I can describe. My Gateways have IDE drives; with
PARDRV loaded, I could copy a tga file from one network C drive to the other
network C drive, and it would go through the PAR tga translation. In other
words, if the tga started out at 600k on one C drive, it would copy over to the
other C drive (on the machine with the PAR) and magically turn into 1,082,898
(the size that the PAR exports). I could go into the PAR software and change
the import/export settings, and change the way tgas copied over the network.
This scared me so bad I have never loaded the PAR and Lantastic together again.
Thanks for the support.
byron
engineering arts
Byron,
<<Do you recommend setting up with one server and the rest slaves?>>
We didn't have a problem with 3DS crashing as long as the machine was not set
up as a server…
<< the tga started out at 600k on one C drive, it would copy over to the other
C drive (on the machine with the PAR) and magically turn into 1,082,898 (the
size that the PAR exports)>>
This is exactly what is happening to us. It is pretty wild! We have also see
the copied targas turning into a scrambled mush…great fun huh?
Dan Kemmis told me today that there is a 1.50 version of the PAR software that
should be in the library. I checked, but it hasn't gotten in yet. Keep your
fingers crossed…
-Donald
PMJI, I'm not sure where this thread starts, but it is so nice to hear others
having similar problems, I was beside myself with glee! (g) I have had the
same type of lantastic/3ds4/par problems with corrupted files or tga's that
look like they've had way too much to drink. My systems are all servers :two
486s (one has a old IDE controller and the other is a new enhanced IDE) and a
pentium (SCSI2) with the par on the *new* 486. I'm also running QEMM7.0.
Dan Kemmis currently has my Par 486 in his back room because all the rest of
the software started freezing up as well on that machine. (hope this doesn't
happen to anyone else). I'm hoping we can get this solved soon, but who knows.
I just thought I'd throw in my two bits and see what happens.
good luck
laurisa
Laurisa,
>> …I have had the same type of lantastic/3ds4/par problems with corrupted
files or tga's that look like they've had way too much to drink..
I think the software designers are the ones that had too much to drink.
Thanks for your response. It helps knowing that others are having the same
problems. It also helps to get the attention of the manufacturer. Greg Pyros
has assured us that the problems will be solved very soon with the next release
of the PAR software. Hang in there.
byron
engineering arts
I am posting this to attach to the thread, and see if anyone else has
experienced it.
When I have Lantastic loaded (server.exe) and render 3DS, occasionally I get a
3DS error:
NULL LIGHT PTR IN GET_LIGHTING
…CONTINUE
I can continue rendering with no problems. I have gotten this error message
several times (when I forget to unload the network software to use 3DS – pain
in the $$$$). Note that I am not network rendering on any computer in the
system. This is a straight render with the Lantastic software loaded in memory
on one computer.
Can anyone in development link this error message to anything? It may be the
answer to the Lantastic 3DS Problem!
byron
engineering arts
>>>We had the same idea — in fact we were ready to go to town: a $250 100Mbs
Ethernet Card — Wow! Sounds too good to be true!!! …. It is too good to be
true… Sadly, while the cards are cheap, the only hub that will work with the
Intel cards is by Synoptics and starts at $16,000.<<<
If you use just two of the Pro/100 you can direct connect them by swapping a
couple of lines. I haven't found a 100Mbs hub yet and can see why. Though I can
wait for prices to go down, wonder how long it will take till it gets to the
$300 price of a 10MBs hub?
Tim,
<<If you use just two of the Pro/100 you can direct connect them by swapping a
couple of lines.>>
That sounds really cool! Too bad we have too many machines at work… Maby I
should try it at home!
<< I haven't found a 100Mbs hub yet and can see why.>>
Synoptics makes it now$$$ Intel sez it took a long time to develop and its the
only thing out there… Hmm…
-Donald
Note that it doesn't make much sense using 100MBps Ethernet (or FDDI) with just
a handful of PC's. No PC will pump much more than around 20MBps any way (20
Mega Bits per second = 2.5 Mega Bytes per second not counting the overhead
which is greater than 200%). Your LAN bottle neck is the ability of the server
to handle multiple requests. There are many different approaches to speed that
up (up to 10 times) without resorting to 100MBps ethernet (and its absurd
costs). If you need lots of performance, you would be better off consulting a
LAN professional and studying the alternatives. There are things out there
(like the Kalpana Ether Switch) that will balance network load distribution and
achieve throughput of up to 60MBps using standard hardware. The trick is having
more than one card on the server and distributing the load among them. Your PC
will do just fine with 10MBps provided it receives data at that rate. If you
stop and really measure you current performance, you will notice it's bellow
3MBPs.
Gus,
>> Note that it doesn't make much sense using 100MBps Ethernet … No PC will
pump much more than around 20MBps any way (20 Mega Bits per second = 2.5 Mega
Bytes per second not counting the overhead which is greater than 200%…).
Thanks for the info and advice. I was planning on using my brain as a last
resort.
byron
Are you running Smartdrv or Lancache with the write caching enabled?
I'm currently using Smartdrv with write-behind disabled (recommended by
Artisoft tech support). I have also tried Lancache with the same disabled.
I'm using Smartdrv because Lancache does not cache CD-ROM (yet).
Thanks for responding.
Byron
I'm running lantastic with no problems. I'm using the windows smartdrv version
(not the dos 6.2 version) as
Smartdrv C D E
to disable the C D and E write caching. I never was able to get lancache to be
stable. I tried your test with the dir while rendering and barely got a
slowdown on the directory display. I must have done it 15 times and to the
different drives on the rendering machine.
Posting your config.sys and autoexec.bat might help see a problem.
Thanks for the response.
I've tried your Smartdrv setup as well as dozens of other combinations. I've
been working on this for over two weeks, tried hundreds of combinations, and
literally have rebooted my computers hundreds of times. However, after reading
your email I realized that I had not tried reloading 3DS4 or reverting back to
3ds3. I've got two big deadlines this week, so I can't afford spending any
more time on it until next weekend.
You've tried it and that's all I need to know now. Thanks very much for your
time.
byron
Byron,
I have been experiencing something similar over the last couple of years. I
now have three workstations and a server. If I try to render on the server then
it crashes with a page frame error at some point when a workstation starts a
frame render.
The problem magically disappeared for several months, which suggests it is
solveable but I just upgraded to a new Pentium 90, Lantastic 6 and swapped all
the cards around – and the nightmare is back. I wasted a lot of time previously
so now I have made the server the slowest machine (DX50) and will keep
rendering off it altogether.
Martin Bowring
Martin,
Thanks for the feedback. Somehow it's a relief to hear that someone else has
the same problem (although it sounds cruel). I will let you know if I find a
solution, or workaround for the problem.
<< I have made the server the slowest machine (DX50) >>
The networks run at such a slow speed I can't imagine that the speed of the
computer would make a difference (whatever works!). Maybe your older machine
has a more stable BIOS. I know! – there's another bug in the Pentium that
won't let people whose name that ends with B do network rendering over
Lantastic with 3DS…OK maybe not.
byron
>>Maybe your older machine has a more stable BIOS
It is a combination of the most unstable motherboard with the worst behaved
cards and the slowest processor, but since it is just handling the network disk
management it works fine.
I intend to investigate the network speed a bit more. Initial thoughts are
that the new P90 off the network may well be faster rendering alone than with
the P90 + 2x Dx66's suffering from the network overhead. I'm suer something is
wrang!
Martin Bowring