February 2007 - 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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MemoryAlloc gone except for disk video
by Richard 24 Feb '07

24 Feb '07

Disk video is the only thing that uses MemoryAlloc anymore. The rest of the code is either using statics, globals, or malloc'ed memory. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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FractInt for Windows (beta 4) -- open for testing
by Richard 20 Feb '07

20 Feb '07

Welcome to the FractInt Makeover! For those of you on the fractint list that may not have heard, I've been overhauling the FractInt source base to move it out of the 16-bit DOS world. Things have been progressing nicely and I'm now at a point where I think widespread testing would be helpful. Download and install beta 4 of FractInt for Windows: <http://tinyurl.com/26dvd7> I've just resubscribed to the fractint list so you can send bug reports to me or to the list. If you have any doubt, just send any bugs to me. A memory dump file will be produced upon a crash, but that shouldn't be happening anymore :-). This is what I would call "Phase I" of the overhaul. It is a migration of the existing DOS source base to a 32-bit Windows application. The user interface looks and acts like DOS because it is just a port of the DOS ui. A minimal amount of "Windows-ification" has been done, but you'll notice a lack of normal Windows things like a menu bar, context menu, paying attention to the mouse, dialog boxes, etc. The next phase will be to backfill these changes into the X Window System version to make all these features available to xfractint. Once that is tested, the beta will be over and a new release made. Known Issues There is no sound output support. There is no mouse support. Panning and zooming is by keyboard only. Video modes with pixel dimensions other than 4/3 aspect ratio assume non-square pixels. The images all render fine, but they appear stretched or squashed. The choice of resolutions in fractint.cfg reflect this. With debugflag=10000, error messages are reported for disk video mode when: start fractint, pick any disk video mode (e.g. 320x200), let it render, wait for completion, then go to the <v> screen, change 320 to 32, submit it. Without the debugflag settings, FractInt for Windows will most likely crash. This problem is present in the DOS fractint and not a result of the port. There are a few gaps in functionality associated with fractal types that were computed via assembly language, but these were mostly integer versions of some of the more common fractal types. If you encounter this situation a message will be displayed informing you that you should switch to floating-point for a useful image. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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RE: [Fractdev] Fractint for Windows (beta 5)
by Paul 20 Feb '07

20 Feb '07

Hi Richard, Just a silly thing. I got the message: "Error - not all memory released, I'll get it" when I tried to exit FRACTINT using the cross in the caption bar. What's the point of the message if you are going to release the memory anyway? The message was followed with: "Memory type memory still allocated. Handle = 5." Thanks, Paul. -----Original Message----- This is the current beta; beta 4 is no longer available. FractInt for Windows (Beta 5) <http://tinyurl.com/2wqa7r>

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X11 compiles and links on branch.
by Richard 19 Feb '07

19 Feb '07

No work done yet on updating the driver, but at least it compiles and links now. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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Re: Fractdev Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7
by marcusadriana 19 Feb '07

19 Feb '07

Can we have again (as in fractint) the screen size 1280 X 1024 ? Thanks Marcus BullGuard Anti-virus has scanned this e-mail and found it clean. Try BullGuard for free: www.bullguard.com

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Fractint for Windows (beta 5)
by Richard 18 Feb '07

18 Feb '07

This is the current beta; beta 4 is no longer available. FractInt for Windows (Beta 5) <http://tinyurl.com/2wqa7r> You can uninstall beta 4 or you can install beta 5 over top of beta 4. If you install over top, beta 4 will be upgraded to beta 5. This fixes all the issues reported earlier with the exception of the history buffer. It appears to reset parameters to their default for the fractal instead of the history buffer parameters, so there is still something going on there... -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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Re: [Fractint] FractInt for Windows (beta 4) -- can't get started
by Richard 18 Feb '07

18 Feb '07

In article <45D79642.7000601(a)grapevine.net.au>, Barry Smith <barrys(a)grapevine.net.au> writes: > However when I tried to run Fractint for Windows I got an error message: > The procedure entry point MiniDumpWriteDump could not be located in > .... dbghelp.dll Fixed. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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stereo.c: outline_stereo
by Richard 17 Feb '07

17 Feb '07

In this function, there are two arrays that are carved out of extraseg: same and colour. What are the maximum indices into these arrays? The same[] array appears to be indexed from 0 to xdots. However, when colour is carved out of extraseg after same, it is done with this code: same = (int far *)MK_FP(extraseg,0); colour = &same[ydots]; This seems to carve out an array for same[] that is ydots long. This is all fine and dandy as long as ydots > xdots, which it is for real video modes, but not necessarily for disk video modes. The same array is only indexed by what looks like an x coordinate, so I think this is a typo and should be xdots and not ydots. I will make this change on the branch; should it be fixed on the HEAD? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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autokey works
by Richard 14 Feb '07

14 Feb '07

AutoKey works now (I just ran through advanced.key). This will be a good way to submit bugs and a good way to compare DOS to Win32. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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