Civ II music won't play

[Legman]

I see now. The drive is a writable drive only, not re-writable. It's a Plextor drive, and I've attempted unsuccesfully to install it a couple of times after the hard drive replacement, but since I didn't really need it at the time, I gave it up when things got complicated.

Now, however, I've got a really good reason to make every effort to get the darn thing to work!

From your explanation of the similar problems other people have had with the same configuration, I'm rather convinced the problem will go away once I install the second drive.

I actually didn't know that one would be able to play regular CD's in the writable drive. It's good to know that the Civ CD can't be changed accidentally - oh, what a bad trip that would be!

As said I'll look into installing the second drive the beginning of next week, probably Tuesday, I'll keep you posted on the progress.

[Ken Hinds]

Legman,

No problem, I'm glad to be of help. As I've posted elsewhere I've been dealing with Operations/Programming since '68 and PCs since '84. I still have and use my IBM-XT that I bought with German DOS and keyboard. I've only started using games in the last 4 years or so, strictly for developmental research of course. After all, computers are tools and not toys.

Plextor is a very good brand. If it is IDE it shouldn't be too difficult to do drivers. SCSI can be somewhat of a problem to the new person however.

Best of luck and lets get you hearing the music again.

Ken

P.S. If you are interested I'll let you know how my attempt to graft the 2.42 music tracks to the MGE Backup game CD goes. I hope that I will be able to listen to and pick from both sets of music.

Ken
[This message has been edited by Ken Hinds (edited July 21, 2000).]

[Legman]

Ken,

With a record like that, no wonder you give good advice! But... do you mean to say a computer can also be used for other things than fun...? What a truely amazing invention, a computer!

Best of luck on your attempts to play the custom selection of music. It would be interesting to hear if you succeed.

I think my Plextor drive is SCSI based, I seem to remember picking that option when the sales guy gave his speech in favour of it. No sweat, I should be able to work it out now that I'm properly motivated!

Have a nice weekend Ken.

[Legman]

Okay, it's been a good three weeks since my last post on this particular problem, and I have just one thing to say:

Woo-hoo!

It wasn't easy for me, but I finally got the music to work. The problem was indeed the two CD drives, an ordinary one designated E:\, and a writable one designated D:\ which wasn't properly installed.

I had to get out all the installation CDs for my system as well as the manuals (which incidentally never seem to mention the problems I'm investigating), and after several nights of installing various driver files and other things I'm not too experienced with, I got the SCSI card installed and working.

This afternoon, I finally got the writable CD drive D:\ to function! Before, all I got was the diodes on the front panel kept flashing, and I couldn't insert the CD cartridge no matter what I tried. Then, by a stroke of luck, I got it inserted by gently pushing the cartridge during a reboot of the system, and now it works!

I did a succesful trial burn of a CD, and felt it was time to test - once again - whether the CivII CD would run and play the music. My first try with the CivII CD in the writable drive didn't work, but in the regular CD drive E:\ it works like a dream! No need to change any settings in the civ.ini file, it's just like there never was a problem in the first place...!

I'm a happy man I tell you. Thank you Ken for all your help and for identifying the source of the problem despite my poor description of the particulars. How did your project with the burning of the music selection CD turn out?




[This message has been edited by Legman (edited August 12, 2000).]