Wierd

[The PIT]

Ut on my windoze 98 has started locking up. Used to work fine and started bombing out after half n hour or so. Every other game in opengl works fine.
I've notice that the mouse response has been jerky and always has. So after a re-install of UT and a few other changes in the bios without any differance I swapped my hamster.
No jerky responses and it didn't bomb out although I need to run it longer to be sure.
Now does UT have a problem with optical mice??? Or this hamster going to the hamster in the sky?
The only other thing that points to the mouse is that under win2k the other day it just stopped working. There was an error in the event viewer concerning a duff reset command on the port. Logging off and back on cured it.
By the way it's an Microshaft optical hamster.

[Dr Mordrid]

This is news?

Actually this is one of Win9x's undocumented features: it's an automatic need-for-upgrade notification

The cure is Win2K SP-2

Dr. Mordrid

[The PIT]

Don't you mean sp3 ???

[Greebe]

Doesn't wierd generally typify all your PC headaches TP?

[The PIT]

Normally I don't have a problem. I still tried running UT with the other mouse for a long period. I'll get around to it though.

[High_Jumbllama]

There are specific surfaces that optical mice have trouble with but overwhelmingly overall they work far better. Mine hates my desk yet works on my pants leg. It could be a surface it doesn't like. Otherwise, there is no difference in functionality. But if it was only in UT, who knows?

[The PIT]

Finally the mouse packed up and is now an Ex Mouse.
Funny how it just killed UT though.

[RichardI]

The mouse is quite a slow device. Confused? Let me explain....

The slowest device gets most priority on the system. Notice when you do copy onto floppy, everying else grinds to a halt or slows right down?

Therefore in UT, the system is waiting for a response from the mouse. It the reponse is not forthcoming, the system will just wait until it gets it. Meanwhite: The rest of the system devices are not gettting the attention from the processor, they need eg graphics card not gettting more data to draw what you see, and things start to judder.

Get it?

[The PIT]

Funny it didn't effect RCW though and I was using mouse input with that. Anyway played UT last night for an hour or so without any problems. Just need to get used to the new mouse.

[RichardI]

Imagine a piechart...

The processor gives a time slice to each task that needs doing. Each slice representing that job. That jobs get done so fast by a modern processor, that you don't notice it. Its sooo bloody quick that all you see is one smooth operation. Jobs that need saving for later are not immediately allocated a slice, and are placed on the stack for later.

Each of the hardware devices in your system has been allocated an interupt. When thay want attention, they poll or "flag" the sytem with an interupt request. A bit like shouting "GIVE ME SOME ATTENTION, NOW".

Current architecture allows only for 16 interupts. 0 to 15. (Remember computers start counting at zero). In windows 9X and above, you can get interupt sharing. In some cases that causes fights, because they both want the same interupt.

Get it? Again.

PS I'm sticking to the old "ball" Microsoft Intelli mouse for now on PS2.

[Technoid]

Originally posted by RichardI
The slowest device gets most priority on the system. Notice when you do copy onto floppy, everying else grinds to a halt or slows right down?

Only happens through the GUI....

Dont happen through the cmd line

Its a Programming error....

[The PIT]

Perhaps I was flinging the mouse around more in unreal and breaking the connection or unreal constantly polls the mouse.