To: falcon3 (Falcon3 Mailing list) Reply-To: falcon3 (Falcon3 Mailing list) Errors-To: postmaster@onion.rain.com Precedence: bulk Bcc: falcon3-outgoing Subject: Falcon3 Digest V4 : I22 Falcon3 Digest Volume 4 : Issue 22 Fri Aug 13 07:04:09 PDT 1993 Compilation copyright (C) 1993 Jeff Beadles Send submissions to "falcon3@onion.rain.com" Send add/drop requests to "majordomo@onion.rain.com" Archives are available via ftp from onion.rain.com [147.28.0.161] and mirrored on cactus.org in /pub/falcon3 Today's Topics: pull 18G's, destroy your plane! roeschmf@craft.camp.clarkson.edu (M Arrrrrgh.. EMM386 & Falcon 3.02 pat Jason_Burrell@fcircus.sat.tx.us (Ja Blackouts intgp1!bash@uunet.UU.NET (Thomas W F4 suggestions cooper@grebyn.com (Gary Cooper) Null Modem and Modem-Modem dpifko@sirius.UVic.CA (Daniel Pifk Flying to the Elbow ejones@yamato.tardis7.sai.com (Edwa Dave 'Philios' Prentice By the way, some of the SH employees were supposed to be getting on > this mailing list. I don't know if they are on yet though. Peter, you > here and willing to hold up your hand? Anyway, the person collecting > the falcon 4 suggestions ought to post a summary of what's been brought > up so far. > I sent Jeff the address for William at SH - don't know if he's on the list or not, though - I'll ask. I could post a summary of what's been brought out so far (re suggestions), but it's basically just the digest edited to only contain the suggestions; and I'm not too awfully worried about doubling (or tripling, whatever) suggestions. Hopefully a request coming from just about everybody will be taken more seriously and be more likely to be implemented. (most popular so far: AWACS and A to A Refueling) [ Well, there's an account "S_Holobyte@aol.com" on the list, so I would say yes. Hi SH people(s)! :-) -Jeff ] coop ------------------------------- From: dpifko@sirius.UVic.CA (Daniel Pifko) Subject: Null Modem and Modem-Modem A friend and I successfully tried 2 forms of direct connection. The first, plugging the modems into each other, required us to set up the connection before accepting the Falcon comm setup. It no doubt can be done with the customizable setup codes in Falcon, but we found our standard comm programs to have better reliability and interactivity. Besides, it ended up being much slower than the null modem setup. The pinouts we used for our 25 pin - 25 pin n-modem were slightly different from the ones you describe, namely: 1 - 1 2 - 3 3 - 2 4 - 5 5 - 4 6 - 2- (20, that is) 20 - 6 7 - 7 and it worked flawlessly with the comm menu set to 57,600 and Direct connection. Not that it couldn't be faster with more sensible comm protocols :-). Good luck, Daniel ------------------------------- From: ejones@yamato.tardis7.sai.com (Edward M. Jones) Subject: Flying to the Elbow OK, I've used the upper-right window of padlock for target direction, and I'm now able to fly to the six of an F18 (I'm in Mig-29) at Veteran Logic Level. However, I keep either: 1) Colliding with the F18 becuase in maneuvers, when I end up on his six, I'm 3 feet away from him it seems... 2) Am always above the F18 (relative to the F18), so I have to keep pulling G's to stay pointed in his direction, or 3) I have a sort-of gun firing solution, but the F18 is either a little too far left or right of my nose for my guns to hit. Could ANYBODY give me some advice on what to do for the final step of killing a bogey with guns after you get on his six? (Advice for the Mig or F16, I don't care). -The Doctor P.S. The following I REALLY don't want to ask for fear of upseting someone, but I need to know, so, here goes: The last couple of times I posted here, I posed a couple detailed questions that no one replied to. Yet, in those subsequent issues, others were replied to quickly, sometimes even in the same note. I know that responding's TOTALLY voluntary in a public forum like this, and not everyone gets reponded to, so, what is proper etiquette when you REALLY want some help in a medium like this, yet you don't want to sound whinny, demanding, or sycophantic? We've got :) for happy and :( for sad, but this is a bit different... I DON'T want to start any flame wars and I'm NOT pointing fingers. -Eddie [ At least for me, often it's the amount of time that I have when the question arrives, combined with the amount of time it would take to answer. Some times, I have quite a bit of time. As far as netiquette, I dunno. -Jeff ] ------------------------------- From: Dave 'Philios' Prentice Subject: I'd like to thank everyone for their advice in getting Falcon3 to run right on my Packard Bell machine. I truly must admit that the sim has never run this smoothly before, on this machine. I've been flying Falcon off and on since it was first released, through every revision except for OFT. The sum off all improvements in 3.02 has completely changed the face of the sim for me. *SMILE* <- huge grin Throwing my 2k in on the loadhi comments, I'd like to say that it works just absolutely great for me. I will even swear that it improves the frame rate for the sim; although, it still bogs down horribly in tough furballs and right about the time I roll in hot on a tough target. It has been mentioned that the secret to success with loadhi is lots of free high memory, and if that is true then I have plenty to share. Considering that I normally run DESQview on this very PC, my memory is optimized more ways than I would ever care to consider. With loadhi/link I have almost 780k free for Falcon3, which it apparantly just loves. I don't imagine that having 2.8megs of EMS free hurts Falcon either. To reinforce a point brought up by a someone previously, there is absolutely no excuse for not having enough free RAM for Falcon. If you don't have the time or inclination to tweak your memory until it bleeds, then it ought to be worth it to you to make a boot floppy or cobble something out of batch files. A point for those of you using QEMM, I have discovered that it does a vastly superior job of shadowing ROM than most chipsets do by hardware. In my case I save about 120k of upper memory by having QEMM do my shadowing than I do by using the hardware settings through my CMOS. To make it even sweeter, my shadowed video BIOS is even *faster* this way because of the way that QEMM shadows it. This has boosted my frame rate in Falcon by about a point and a half. Its worth it to me. Incidentally, I get this much free high ram because I use the hardware cache on my HDD instead of any software cache and I have eliminated *EVERY* TSR and driver that I can't load seperately within an individual DV window. Not even using anything fancy like DOSMAX, which I have found saves me less high ram than my present method. Anybody want my config and autoexec to play with? David "Uses his cannon like a chainsaw" Prentice ------------------------------- From: Dave 'Philios' Prentice Subject: In regards to the Aussie having v3.02 install problems: If I am not mistaken, epatch.rtp patches Falcon to v3.0e while the two 302patch files do the upgrade portion to v3.02 from there. Since you have already upgraded to v3.0e before acquiring v3.02, you shouldn't need this patch. If you would like to be triply safe, then you could copy off your squadron data and try a fresh install from original disks again. Concerning install problems, it is my belief that the only right way to perform an upgrade is with a fresh install right then and there. Why do I say so? Just prior to D/Ling the v3.02 upgrade, but immediately after having FTPed it to my VAX account, I installed Falcon3 and fly around a for a couple hours out of Nellis. My original disks are from the first release of Falcon3, so this version was *raw* v3.0 (no "a"). The next day I attempted to install v3.02 through the install program and it failed about half-way through the first patch. I attempted a manual install to patch what was left and got a couple of errors. Disgusted, I formatted my hard drive and installed Falcon3 again. Seriously, I *did* format the drive! Of course, at that same time I pulled my old drive and dropped in a shiny new Maxtor 7245A. *giggle* Fresh install went in without a hitch. Okay, so it had one error! I don't know how serious this is, and it may be because my originals are *ancient*, but epatch.rtp failed to apply itself to PANAMA.STA, returning the error code 'wpt0036' to me. I shrugged and ignored it. Next time I perform an install I will patch to v3.0c before doing the full meal deal with v3.02. Of course, the next time I install it will be to add MiG-29 so this will be strickly academic. Say, Jim? Are you planning to create BFM lessons for v3.02 like you already did for v3.01.1? If you are, I'd be very interested to fly them. I need a lot of practice right now! ------------------------------- From: "laughter, laughter - away the morale supression team" Subject: WCS II calibration woes I just got a FCS and WCSII and have managed to bung it all up. Hacker that I am I ran the calibrate routine and now I only get afterburner out of the throttle. Essentially what happens is if I start the throttle at the off detent, I'll get the programmed number of "=" characters and then it advances into AB ok, but when I pull back I get only "," characters which only reduces the AB modes. Conversly if I start with the wcs full AB and pull back I get the programmed number of "-" characters and then it goes into AB when I hit the idle detent. I can see this at the DOS prompt and also when running TESTMK2. Recalibrating yeilds the same results. Anyone else having trouble? I will be calling Thrustmaster to discuss the difficulty. thanks in advance dave ------------------------------- [[ End of digest Volume 4 : Issue 22 ]]