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How to get Skies Of Arcadia (echelon) working properly!!!!

OP
A

aika-san

New member
I did a bit of searching and found a few things out about the BAD POOL HEADER error. This is an obscure error that can crop up due to a number of reasons. Here's the most common ones:

Overclocking. I notice you have your CPU overclocked. Put everything that you have overclocked back to stock speeds/voltages and try again. If you are overclocking your RAM then make sure you put that back to stock as well.
Try again now.

A driver conflict can also cause this error. Make sure all your drivers are up to date and try again.

This error was introduced in Service Pack 2, so if possible uninstall that and try again. Some people have problems running Chankast using SP2. I have stuck with SP1 mainly because I can't see the point in SP2. It's just a big security patch and it has issues with a number of programs. As long as you run a decent firewall/virus checker then SP1 is fine.

Hope this gives you some ideas. Judging from what I have read, I think you will find that overclocking is the culprit.
 

Federelli

Beta Tester
A couple of things :).

1. Chankast runs just fine on my PC, in fact too damn fast, over 200fps in Code Veronica at times.
2. The CPU is overclocked only when Doom3 is being used :).
3. Going back to SP1 is impossible, sorry.
4. Thank you very much for very precious time :).

I'll research on this for a while and be back.
 
OP
A

aika-san

New member
Maybe you got a bad stick of memory or some other dodgy hardware. Without having access to your PC there's not much I can do. The DTools forums don't mention this error. I think if you eliminate it then all your issues will be solved. I really think it's a hardware fault though because if it was software related then it would have been experienced by other people using chankast and/or DTools. Also, most Blue Screens are caused by hardware related issues. Normally conflicting/damaged/old drivers or hardware. another common reason for blue screens is overheating due to bad cooling or overclocking. they can also be caused by psu's that aren't delivering enough amps. A good test in these cases is to bare-bones your system. In other words, unplug as much hardware as you can. just leave your cpu, hd and 1 stick of ram, and 1 gfx card. disconnect power, remove all other cards and unplug all other sticks of ram and unplug all other hd's except your boot drive and unplug all cd/dvd units. unplug any stuff you have hanging off usb/serial/parallel. if possible plug another psu in. do your cmos reset and leave everything at default. if you still get the error, switch off and remove the single stick and replace with a different single stick, preferably from a different manufacturer. it looks like you built your own pc so you should be able to do these tests. if you didn't then it would be best not to attempt any of this because i don't want to be responsible for telling you how to kill your pc.

i do pc repair for a living and i'd say 95% of blue screens that i fix are due to bad/incompatible hardware/drivers. the other 5% are due to people attempting to run incompatible software on their os. i.e. running xp only progs on win95. this obviously does not apply to you.

i know this is not the answer you want to hear, and i know that you really would rather not be playing around with the innards of your pc, but these are the best ideas i can come up with. if you came to me to have your error fixed, these are the tests i would do on your pc.

if these tests did not fix the problem, i would plug a different hd, cpu and finally motherboard. this way the error can be tracked down fairly quickly, and the hardware responsible can be eliminated.

here's a few blue screen horror stories i've dealt with recently:

1) amd k62/500 blue screens with irql_not_less_than_or_equal_to error at random intervals. first thing is that k6 chips run at fairly high temperatures so it's important to have good cooling. the second thing i notice is that when i go to pick up the pc, the user has it sitting on a carpet floor. third thing is that the air intake vent is close to the bottom of the tower. when i open it up, i find that the inside is liberally coated with dust and fluff and god knows whatever else. this pc had been acting as an expensive vaccum cleaner. the cpu/heatsink/fan looked like a mound of dirt sitting on a board that looked like a dirt floor. cleaned everything up, removed heatsink/fan/cpu and cleaned all fluff from them. replaced everything and set it up in a room doing benchmarks with a heater going (it's summer here). the ambient temperature was around 42 degrees. 6 hours later it was still going. sent it back, no probs since.

2) celeron 466 freezes up or goes blue screen or does not start at all sitting on a black screen and bleeping some code. can't remember which error. i began by removing all cards and putting my own gfx card in. the problem remained. then i replaced all original cards and removed the single 128MB memory stick and replaced with my own stick. the problem disappeared. so i removed my stick and replaced the original one. the problem did not return. for good measure i cleaned the original stick and socket and replaced them. this is a reminder that even a small piece of fluff or a hair in a socket can cause a problem. it only takes 1 of the many pins in a socket to not make good electrical contact and you will have blue screen problems.

sometimes the act of unplugging and replugging everything can work wonders when it comes to blue screens. i call it reseating. there are a huge number of reasons why reseating is a good idea when you think you have a hardware issue. sometimes pc's get put together using fairy hands and things aren't plugged in as firmly as they should be. turning a pc on and off results in hot/cold cycles. the expansion/contraction of metals due to these cycles can cause plugs to work loose. old pc's which did not have clips to hold ram in used to occasionally have a stick work it's way completely out of it's socket due to this cycling. pci/agp slots can have this problem especially when fairy hands are combined with cycling.

anyway, hope all this helps or at least gives you an idea of where the problem lies.
 
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Federelli

Beta Tester
Funny, i repair PCs as well, but just for hobby :).

Thanks for your time again, since i know you must be very busy.

Well, my memory's just fine, i'm gonna format the boot drive soon, and i'll come back and post some news :).
 

Cynric

New member
Can you please explain how to fix the 'xcopy' error? Everything else works fine for me except that the "\soatp" folder isn't created. I tried opening a command prompt and typing "xcopy /?" and DOS doesn't recognize the command. It's the proper filesize, and I've also tried downloading Xcopy from three different websites and none of them worked. Can you help please?
 
OP
A

aika-san

New member
Vyse said:
2 aika-san
Could you put here 1st_read.bin (non-echelon or already patched) ???

Posting 1st_read.bin files from original games is against the forum rules and would result in my being banned and this thread being locked. That's why the patch was developed. To get the job done without breaking the rules.

Cynric said:
Can you please explain how to fix the 'xcopy' error? Everything else works fine for me except that the "\soatp" folder isn't created. I tried opening a command prompt and typing "xcopy /?" and DOS doesn't recognize the command. It's the proper filesize, and I've also tried downloading Xcopy from three different websites and none of them worked. Can you help please?

You have got broken DOS support. Read earlier in this thread and you will find the full explanation you need plus a link to a microsoft document describing the procedure to repair it. This problem is not caused by SOAPatcher. It's a common windows fault that can affect any software which tries to access DOS.
 
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Vyse

New member
2 aika-san

Dreamer said : i'm up to here: '9. The patch will now be applied and you will find that the 'bonito.drv' file has got a lot larger. It will probably be around 5MB in size now.

Where is he find this manual?
And how he did that?

Soatp do not recognize my images. Why?
It says :

Detected mounted Skies of Arcadia cdi image file(s)...
Could not detect any Skies of arcadia cd's
Have you mounted your cdi image file(s) with Deamon tools v3.29? ==== Yes, I have!

My soa patcher folder is F:\soatp.
Free space on drive F: - ~20 Gb
Deamon tools v3.29. - installed.
Windows Xp professional sp1
Celeron 1.7 GHz
256 Mb ram
Geforce4 128Mb MX440
Segate 60 GB + 160Gb IDE
Sony cd-rw 48x24x48

My Echelon CDI images are:
cd1-749Mb (785 758 838 byte)
cd2-776Mb (814 479 958 byte)
How I can made 1st_read.bin and ip.bin manually?
 
OP
A

aika-san

New member
2 vyse:

your pc has issues. i don't have the time for helping with a technical issue like yours due to work. My recommendation is to apply the patch using someone else's pc and then compress/burn the patched cdi files to cd/dvd and then take these and unpack/use them on your pc.
 

Vyse

New member
2 aika-san:
you said: Posting 1st_read.bin files from original games is against the forum rules and would result in my being banned and this thread being locked.

Ok But you can posy it to my mail.
Please if you can send it to me [email protected].

I can't run soa patcher, but i want play it.
 

Vyse

New member
It's really working!
I'm allready in Yafutoma and the game crashed every 5 minutes!!
also I have broken translate.((
 

Fina

New member
Yafutoma was the single most painful stretch in the game. You simply cannot do anything. You need luck and to know exactly where you are running. Go directly from point a to point b. I posted a small pointer for getting through Yafutoma earlier in the topic with tips like modifying the CPU speed and such.
 

Vyse

New member
Can i do somethings with my translate?

"FGdkf kjfdngvireuhg dl gndfkiug gdyufhpjo pjoe igudr hs gsu6e fd pjg" -- is it normal?
 

guenthar

New member
I have that problem but all I do is alt-tab out of the program and go back to the program. (if in windowed mode minimizing it then restoring it should work.)
 

beholderMr

New member
I'v tried to patch my soa echelon cd. after running the patch the porgram make a new cdi file.
I mount it as usual with daemon tool but i can;t read the mounted CD, is that ok?
Cos the image appear to be broken and unreadable.
Chankast trows a i/o Error.
I tried to patch it for my self, so

I take the 1st_read.bin run the delta2bin the files ..
run delta2bin.exe 1st_read.bin 1st_read.new CD1_1st_read.dlt
delete 1st_read.bin
rename 1st_read.new to 1st_read.bin
I copied the ip.bin and patched 1st_read.bin into the fastboot\DATA directory
run b2b_game.bat but I modify the batch file so it don;t delete the ISO
that create 2 files a iso and the cdi....
The iso it create can be mounted normaly and you can read the directory, but the cdi , you can not. same as the patch itself..
The question is

I'm running the patch in another echelon version of soa?
Did somebody have the 1st_read.bin patched and working.. so I can create the cdi?
can someone help me
 

Vyse

New member
Hi again!
I near Utorba tartas.When I fly in it the game crashs all time! Black screen and nothing else. Help me! ! ! !
 
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Dark Mits

Eternal Darkness
Solving the problem in Yafutoma and the "black screen" when entering a specific area:

I had the same problem three times (read earlier in topic). Possible cause is that the patching was not done properly -or- the patched image is not contiguous on the hard disk but fragmented (I need proof on the second reason). Try repatching the original image. It worked for me all the time. I don't know if Daemon Tools has any problems with fragmented images, before patching try to defragment your hard disk. Hope I've helped. The game IS completeable!

-EDIT-
Forgot to say that the above problem is solved IF when the screen turns black you can still hear to the music or sounds. Also, the VMU screen freezes.
 

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