(Last updated 30 January 2013)

Latest update: NR52

Saved games

If you send us a saved game (.SAV file) when reporting a problem, please send it zipped. Some email software changes text files in transmission, and we’ve recently received several saved files that were unusable because of this.

Trouble with XP, Vista, 7 or 8?

If you have trouble with graphics or sound with any of our simulations when using Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8, we strongly recommend trying the free program DOSBox. This is Open Source software that makes your modern fast computer emulate a much older PC running DOS, and it does it very well. As well as fixing most problems with graphics and sound, it will let you run the Driver and Signal Box simulations in a window. It’s easy to install, and the default settings seem to work fine. For more information please click on the DOSBox menu item on the left.

This or something similar is essential if you want to run our Driver or Signal Box simulations with Windows Vista or later. Please see the item on our Home page about this.

Problems

If you have a problem with any of our simulations, particularly the new ones, the quickest way to resolve them is to email details to us at support@siam.co.uk. Please say if you can accept a replacement as a zipped .exe file, as that’s the quickest way for us to help you. If possible please attach a saved game position from which we can reproduce the problem; because text files can get corrupted in email transmission, it’s best to zip saved files.

Fixes

We are providing for downloading from this site corrected versions of some recent simulations. We hope this will particularly help customers who experience difficulties with early versions. The downloads will be zipped files from a password-protected area on this site, and in each case the password is a word from one of the screens of the relevant simulation.

If you don’t have a suitable unzip program such as WinZip or ZipMagic, WinZip can be downloaded from the WinZip web site at www.winzip.com or is on most computer magazine cover disks.

To find details of known errors and fixes, click on the simulation program name in the list on the left. To avoid clutter, fixes will be removed from the web site after a year or so.

Problems on fast machines

If you run on a fast machine (certainly 300MHz and faster, possibly 266MHz) any of our simulations dated earlier than 27 November 1997, you will find that they fail with a runtime error 200 (or, if they are very old, run at lightning speed!). This is due to a problem in a timing routine within the Borland Pascal library. If you encounter this problem, please ask for free updates. All the sample programs are now available on this site in updated versions to fix this speed problem.