To Our Origin Customers: Updated as of December 21, 1993 We want to say thank you for buying Strike Commander and hope that you are enjoying the game. We have heard from many of you and appreciate your input. The following list is a compilation of work-arounds and helpful suggestions for those who are experiencing trouble with Strike Commander. Please feel free to let us know what kind of problems you are having so that we can help you as soon as possible. Although we used 2 out of house testing facilities, we could not catch every conceivable conflict, and for this we apologize. If there is anything you need help with, please let us know via this BBS, or call our Customer Service line. Thank you, Chris Roberts, The Strike Commander Team, and Origin Customer Service Joystick Calibration Fix If no joystick is being recognized or says the calibration isn't correct. If your joystick is plugged into a speed adjustable card: 1. You need to adjust the speed of the gamecard until you get a speed that is right for Strike Commander. 2. For the CH Gamecard 3 automatic, you will need to run the chjoy3 program to change the speed of the card. For example, at the C prompt you would type: chjoy3 28 to adjust the speed to 28. Then try to calibrate the joystick in Strike Commander. If it is not detected, try another speed such as chjoy3 27 etc... until you find the speed that is correct for this program on your machine. 3. For the Kraft Systems High Speed Game Card, you will have pin adjustments on the card for speed adjustment. Try a different speed until you get one that works for Strike Commander. 4. For the Gravis Eliminator card, there is an external dial that adjusts the speed of the card. Just adjust the speed on the dial until you find one that works correctly with Strike Commander. 5. If you have any questions about any of this check the game card documentation for explanations and examples. (For all joysticks including Thrustmaster FCS and CH Flightstick) If your joystick pointer is losing calibration: 1. Delete JOYA.DAT file from your Strike directory. 2. Unplug your joystick. 3. Run Strike (type SC). 4. When you are looking at the Weapons Loading screen, plug the joystick back into your port. 5. When you fly a mission, the screen will become distorted and the calibration bar will appear at the bottom of the screen. Calibrate your joystick at this time. If this fix does not solve your problem, try your joystick in a different game port preferably your sound card port or on a different machine. The port could be the problem so disable all alternative ports but the one you're using. Consult your manufacturer's documentation on how to do this. For joysticks plugged into sound cards If your joystick is not recognized, or is losing calibration in the game 1. Try another IRQ on your sound card. An IRQ conflict is the most common cause of problems with joysticks plugged into sound cards. NOTE: You will need to follow these instructions if at anytime you change/upgrade the joystick that you use to play. 2 Joysticks being recognized If Strike Commander is asking about calibrating 2 joysticks: 1. Delete the JOYA.DAT file from the Strike directory. (If you have a file called JOYB.DAT, delete it as well). 2. Unplug the joystick. 3. Run Strike Commander (type SC). 4. When you see the Weapons Loading screen, plug the joystick back into your port. 5. When you fly a mission, the screen will become distorted and the calibration bar will appear at the bottom. Calibrate your joystick at this time. NOTE: If you change your joysticks at any time, you will need to follow these instructions again for correct performance. Game is already firing weapons upon entering If Strike Commander is firing automatically for you: 1. Be sure that the 'autofire' button is off on the joystick. 2. Check your sound card for any IRQ conflicts. Pull the sound card from the machine and try the game again. Thrustmaster Weapons Control System (WCS): Cannot select weapons If you have a Thrustmaster and cannot select weapons: There is a upgrade chip from Thrustmaster that will allow you to select your weapons appropriately. You must call and ask for the "STRIKE COMMANDER" upgrade chip. Speech Accessory Pack "locks" in installation. If your Strike Commander Speech Accessory Pack locks on install: Type "Speech -A" to install. This should fix the problem. Optimal Boot Disk Configuration (Omit all EMS drivers) If you have trouble installing or running Strike, use this boot configuration as listed on page 3 of documentation: Config.sys: Device=himem.sys dos=high files=25 buffers=25 Autoexec.bat: path=c:\dos prompt $p$g If you have problems with disk 8 upon installation where it blanks to a grey screen and never starts unpacking graphics, try one of the following. 1. Use the above boot disk with the addition of the EMM386 driver. Insert the following line after the dos=high line. device=c:\dos\emm386.exe 2592 /x=e000-efff ram or 2. Instead of typing "install" type "install -f." Then when you start the game you will need to type "sc -f" instead of "sc". If your game unpacked graphics but gives you a "bad command" error message when typing SC to start the game. 1. Make sure you did not esc or turn the machine off during the graphic generation part of the install. 2. If you did interrupt this intallation, try installing the game again. If the graphics do not start generating on the next installation, you have damaged disk 8 and will need to replace it. Error message "1910" If you receive an error message that says "1910" 1. Make a boot disk using the configuration we suggest, and boot your machine with it. The error should go away. 2. If the error persists, boot the machine with this same boot disk, then reinstall your game. 3. If your game installs fine and you play and then receive this error message, this could mean a bad file, and reinstalling should fix it. Error message "1941" Check your hard drive space. You will probably need to have about 45 megs free for the full install (this leaves and addition 10 megs) or 35 megs free for the partial install. Remember if you are installing on a dblspaced drive you may need to have a little more compressed space free. (The game is checking ACTUAL disk space). Then make the recommended boot disk and reinstall. Any error message ending in "ffff" Make the boot disk with the EMM386 driver installed as listed above: device=c:\dos\emm386.exe 2592 /x=e000-efff ram. Then boot with this disk and reinstall. If the problem persists, you should try running the OSItest on the disks and the game to check the file integrity. If there is a problem you should exchange the disks for a new set. Not getting Speech with a Sound Blaster Pro If you are using a sound card on a DMA other than DMA 1 and you are not getting speech: You will need to edit the sc.cfg file. The bottom line is the sound line and will look like the above listing. <-ds25>. If you have the card set on DMA 0 then change the file to look like this: <-ds250>. So you will add the DMA channel to the end of the line. If you are using DBLSPACE with Strike Commander you will need to use the following boot disk configuration: config.sys device=c:\dos\himem.sys dos=high dos=umb device=c:\dos\emm386.exe 2592 /I=b000-B7ff ram files=25 buffers=25 devicehigh=c:\dos\dblspace.sys /move autoexec.bat path=c:\dos prompt $p$g If you are getting a NUL pointer assignment error message: You need to load the Pro Audio Spectrum driver low in the config.sys if you select Pro Audio in the install. Or, if you want to leave the driver loaded high, you need to select Sound Blaster in the installation of Strike Commander. If you are having any problems with the speed of the game, installation, error messages, joystick problems that are not solved by following the above instructions, we have a test file that you can run on Strike Commander. It checks for joystick problems, calculates machine performance index, checks for software conflicts, Tests the original Strike Commander disks, and checks for hardware conflicts. You can find the OSItest.zip in the gamapub section 12 Library. It has a readme.txt file that explains what each test does and how to solve problems it may find.