January 2005 - Fractdev - mailman.xmission.com

Athlon woes
by Tim Wegner 03 Sep '08

03 Sep '08

I built a computer last year using an Athlon with a Gigabyte motherboard. I had troubles with Fractint - with any SVGA mode the computer would hang after the completion of the image. I always assumed this was an Windows XP issue. Today I tried Fractint with freedos on the same computer, with the same results. So apparently it's an incompatability bgetween fractint and my compuiter. Truecolor, 320x200, diskvideo, and even tweaked modes work. SCGA modes fail, and only after the image completes. This behavior appears to have nothing to do with recent versions. Has anyone else had trouble with Athlon? Hmm, maybe I need to look at bios settings. Tim

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Patch 6
by Jonathan Osuch 03 Jul '05

03 Jul '05

Tim, I'm going to try to wrap up patch 6 this week. So far, this is what I have: Fixed FPUcplxdiv and FPUcplxlog routines in fpu087.c to match assembler code. Fixed it so spaces are recognized in PAR entry names. Fixed evolver parameter entry. Fixed hypercomplex fractal type to turn off symmetry when a cj parameter is used. Fixed the plasma type to show the value of the parameter that is actually used in the image generation. Fixed the plasma type so that a parameter file uses the included colors instead of the default colors. Revised the plasma type prompt to reflect the values that could actually be used. Fixed inside=atan and outside=atan to use the full color palette instead of limiting to 180 colors. Modified the resume code to remove the Xfractint specific sections since they are no longer needed. I still need to move all this over to DOS and make sure nothing is broken. There are other fixes I would like to include, but haven't done them yet. Jonathan

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Mathtolerance variable
by Jonathan Osuch 14 Jan '05

14 Jan '05

Tim, I've had an extended email exchange with Charles Crocker about a problem he was seeing that relates back to the mathtolerance variable. I see several problems 1) Mathtolerance is not saved in GIF's, 2) Mathtolerance is not saved in PAR's, 3) Mathtolerance is not ever reset to default values. I understand the original intended use of the variable, but with Jim Muth including it on a regular basis with his FOTD it looks like we should incorporate it into the fractal_info and history_info structures. To do this will require increasing the size of the fractal_info structure, which then gets saved to GIF's. Do you recall if this will cause problems with older versions of Fractint reading these GIF's? Jonathan

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