May have SOLUTION to out of MEM problem!

[Sam-I-am]

Hello all!
First time posting but long time reader.

I have seen a quite a few people asking for help on the out of mem on the carriers planes.

I also had the problem but found a simple solution.

I have Win-xp but I have used this solution before with 95 and 98 on other dos games as well..


1. Create a short-cut of the pac.exe to the desktop.

2. go to the shortcut on the desktop and right click to properties.

3.Go to memory tab

a. put total on auto.

b. check the protected box

c. Ems to none

d. xms to none

e. no check in the use hma box

f. ms-dos mem to max mem numbers mine is 16384

4.click save settings

5. start your game from this short-cut and see what happens.


Experement with the settings if my setting did not do the trick.
I hope this is not to confusing.

BTW

don't worry about messing anything up as you can delete the shortcut you made on the desktop.

[RayM]

Your message as well as those posted by others encouraged me to look at my mem usage. I am running Win98 with the standard load. Running MEM showed that I had 580K conv mem free. Using this load, I have been able to run 2.3 just fine but the messages regarding carrier a/c change and the resulting out of mem response piqued my interest. So I fire up the game, located a carrier and selected an a/c. Lo and behold, the dreaded out of mem message appeared.

I tried your suggestion posted above but was unable to change carrier a/c. I went back into my autoexec. bat and config.sys and REM'ed everything and ran MEM again with the following results.

Item CONV
MSDOS 19,104
HIMEM 1,168
DBLBUFF 2,976
IFSHLP 2,864
WIN 3,696
VMM32 3,008
FREE 622,320

Upon starting PACWAR from the desktop icon again, I found that I could now access and change carrier aircraft without getting the out of mem message.

Now for the downside. Because my CD initializes via the autoexec.bat and config.sys files, having to REM out the CD related lines (it took over 28K) from both files means that the drive won't be up after the Win98 loads. I would prefer to have it available in case I don't play PACWAR. One option of course is to change the autoexec.bat and config.sys lines everytime I want to play PACWAR or I could just swap out files that are REM'ed out and those that are not. Not very elegant but workable if I want to get as much mem as possible.

Now for the exploring/wandering phase. Looking further into the matter, I went to Properties tab for the PACWAR icon and clicked the Advanced Program Setting button. Interesting items there. At this point, I basically experimented for some time with the MS-DOS Mode options. I REM'ed out the lines shown in the autoexec.bat and config.sys windows. I then clicked the PACWAR icon and waited to see what happened. After a minute of two, Win98 shut down and the PACWAR booted up. I was able to access carrier a/c again and make changes without getting the out of mem message. Now for the kicker...no mouse! The keyboard commands work just fine but I do not relish using the keyboard as my main input device.

Realizing I needed to add a mouse driver to the Advanced Program settings windows, I searched for one on my system and found mouse.drv in the \Windows\System folder. Continuing to stumble along, I added lines to the Autoexec.bat for MS-DOS window to allow my system to load my mouse driver. After numerous attempts, I couldn't get the mouse to load using this method under any combination of instructions in the windows. Clearly and with no shame, a major cause of this failure is that my autoexec.bat and config.sys writing skills have all but disappeared and my knowledge of the internal workings of Win98 icons and associated tabs is not what it must be to make this approach work. On the plus side, I learned quite a bit tonight....

I suspect that there is a way to have the mouse load using this approach but I am wondering whether I need a stand alone MS-DOS mouse driver loaded somewhere matched with lines in the Advanced Program settings windows? Can you suggest the lines I should use in the Advanced Program Setting windows?

Also, is there anything else I can do the items listed above in the MEM report that would allow me to keep the CD loaded yet get close to 622K?

I will also look into generating a game boot disk (or start disk in Win98 terms) for PACWAR as a much simpler alternative.

Finally, I want to thank you again for giving me the push to look into the matter even though I haven't figured it out yet. I guess a challenge is good every now and then. On a gaming level, I would like to be able to use this newly discovered (for me anyway) capability in the future.

Any ideas?

RayM

[ February 16, 2002: Message edited by: RayM ]

[ February 16, 2002: Message edited by: RayM ]</p>

[RayM]

Victory at last. See my post under Tech Spt forum.

RayM

[pigui19]

Guys

What do you refer to carrier aircraft out of mem?

I´m new in this stuff and I would like to know everything.

Thanks

[RayM]

The out of memory issue refers to the message a player gets when he tries to change aircraft type or mission type for the aircraft squadrons aboard an aircraft carrier (there might be other situations that may cause the same error...I haven't seen them yet).

In my case (having been playing PACWAR for about a year or so), I was unaware that I could change aircraft type and mission for carrier planes just as you can for land based air. I finally looked to see if I had the problem and found out I did...hence all the message traffic (see the recent posts on the Tech Spt forum).

As you may have noticed and many have found to their dismay, PACWAR requires most of the 640K conventional memory. The fixes vary (see any number of requests for help and advice and the great responses). FYI, I had been playing PACWAR 2.2 and 2.3 with just 589K but after working with my autoexec.bat and config.sys files over the last couple days, I finally freed 626K of conventional memory. I think the minimum amount needed to avoid the out of memory message is 600K. This estimate is based on limited experimentation over the last few days. Perhaps others have different values.

[ February 17, 2002: Message edited by: RayM ]</p>

[Major Tom]

There IS a way in getting around this memory error without nuking your confic or autoexec files.

When you click on a carrier air group, and it gives you the error, without clicking anything, hit either "C" or "M".

If you hit the "C" key, then it will give you a list of aircraft to change the group to. If you hit "M" it will give you a list of missions.

Although it makes it more difficult to do, you can still change mission/type of aircraft in a Carrier group if you have the memory error and cannot get rid of it.

[Bulldog61]

This worked for me and I'm using XP Pro. Thanks!!

Mike

[Sam-I-am]

Glad you guys got it to wrk. <img src="smile.gif" border="0">


RayM!

OMG!!
You lucky sunofgun!

You get to play the game in a whole new perspective with not knowing about the changing of the plane missions and such.

I'm jealous <img src="wink.gif" border="0">

[Klondike]

Earlier today I posted about an out of memory message and then I read Sam-I-Am's post...I followed his instructions to the T and now pacwar runs fine...Thanx Sam

[Culiacan Mexico]

Originally posted by Sam-I-am
I have seen a quite a few people asking for help on the out of mem on the carriers planes.

I also had the problem but found a simple solution.

I have Win-xp...

It worked for me. Thank You.

[orabera]

Stumbled on a possible solution to the memory problem and would appreciate someone trying it out. I've tried on WinXP Home and Win2k Server and worked fine on both.

rename pacwar.exe to Pacific War.exe.

Run it.

On my computers no more out of memory problems, worked on both 2.3 and 3.0, no noticable other problems created.

[Paul Dyer]

Sam-I-am, very helpful-you-R

[Sam-I-am]

*bump*

[mutterfudder]

bump

[zeke99]

HELP !!!!!!

Problem with display on my notebook, wide screen, XP.

The game works but besides 0 no number is readable.
I tried true type and bitmap and both setting.

Any ideas,
cheers

[Capt. Harlock]

Occasionally this is caused by low memory, but far more often it is due to the PC's not supporting EGA graphics. (Which, admittedly, are ancient.) Check with your laptop's manufacturer to see if they have a BIOS update that can support EGA.

[zeke99]

Thanks, updated my bios and display drivers but still the same.

I think simply no EGA support

[hgilmer]

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
I've been using the same fix Major Tom described.&nbsp; It isn't hard and all you have to worry about is not seeing they menu options.&nbsp; You just have to know what you can change.
&nbsp;

[The Luddite]

I was having the "out of memory" problem and was able to fix it. I first tried the settings given by Sam-i-am, and continued to get the warning. Next I went into AUTOEXEC.NT, which is the DOS startup file on my machine, and REM'ed out everything except the 'echo' command at the beginning. After that the out of memory problem disappeared.

I am running Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 2002 Service Pack 2.

I don't know whether it was just the REM'ing of the AUTOEXEC.NT commands or a combination of that and the settings listed by Sam-i-am, but with both changes in place the out of memory problem is solved.

Thank you to Sam-i-am, and to the rest of you who posted suggestions here.

[Capt. Harlock]

I don't know whether it was just the REM'ing of the AUTOEXEC.NT commands or a combination of that and the settings listed by Sam-i-am, but with both changes in place the out of memory problem is solved.

My guess is that it's the REM'ing in AUTOEXEC.NT. Incidentally, if you'll look in the "sticky" thread at the top, it's possible to use custom AUTOEXEC and CONFIG files in Windows XP. (e.g. you can create one named AUTOEXEC.PW and have the PAC.EXE file use it when it starts.)