Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!disd
From: disd@hubcap.clemson.edu (Gary Heffelfinger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: My SimCity experiences.
Message-ID: <5763@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 14 Jun 89 16:31:01 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 74


First, my configuration:

2000 w. rev 4.4 motherboard
1M = .5M HALFAST + .5M CHIP
2 3.5" floppies
1 48M HD partitioned into 2 FFS pieces.
KS 1.2 -- WB 1.3

I have SimCity working now after a little work.


Here's my hopefully short, and certainly dull, story:


2 nights ago I copied SimCity to my HD per the instructions in the
manual (and my own common sense).  I started it up and decided to play
with a pre-built city for a few hours to get the feel for the game.  Not
a hitch in the 2 hours or so.

Last night I decided it was time to build my own city.  So I fired it
up, and clicked the appropriate gadget on the city limits sign.  The drive
whirred for a few moments and then stopped.  Nothing.  Large chunks of
my memory were gone.  (Doncha hate programs that can't gracefully deal
with error conditions? :-( )

Reboot.

So I decided to try launching this program from a CLI instead, just to
see if there were some error messages being generated.  Sure enough, I
got the same result, but this time was rewarded with a "helpful" error
message.  "Error #97" or somesuch.  

Next I created a specialized boot floppy that would mount the
appropriate partition, do the necessary assigns, and the RUN the program.  
Reboot.  Gronk. Gronk.  Whirrr.  Task Held.  Piss.  Moan.

"Great!", says I, as I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to
run SC off of a floppy.  So I duplicated the SimCity distribution disk
and booted from it.  The memory indicator of WB read 900,000+.  I click
started it, and brought up the city builder without any trouble.  

Then I realized that this is not what I'd tried to do a few minutes
ago.  Instead of running this baby in my HD startup-sequence, maybe
I should loadwb and click start it from the hard disk.  So I changed my
special SimCity Hard Disk Startup to do a LOADWB and ENDCLI instead
of RUN DH0:SIMCITY/SIMCITY.  Worked perfectly for 3 or 4 hours.  (Except
for the fact that I'm a lousy city planner. :-)

I summary, I created a new boot floppy with a special startup sequence
that strips out all of my favorite, RAM consuming, tools, and does the
necessary ASSIGN's.  Then I started up SimCity from the workbench.  The
memory indicator read somewhere between 800K and 900K before I started
SC.

Draw your own conclusions but it looks to me like SC is just a memory hog.
Since many of you have much more FAST RAM than I do, I would guess that
CHIP is the culprit.




Okay, so I lied about the short part, but at least I didn't lie about
the dull part. :-)
 
Gary


BTW, I think the game is terrific, even if it is a hog.  Here's to a few
bug fixes that'll clean up the memory allocation problems. 
-- 
Father of Kathryn Leigh Heffelfinger ------ disd@hubcap.clemson.edu
          ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^
8 lbs, 9 ounces, and 20 inches of neat stuff.