David wrote: I think the support or lack of support for VESA video modes is what may
keep Fractint from running at full capacity on some machines even when run from DOS. But wouldn't you get at least a stock 640x480 mode on almost anything?
What I recall was that years ago I used additional VESA software like SciTech doctor to fill out VESA support that was was missing in the video board's native support. When experimenting with ways to run Fractint under Windows 7 or 8 recently, I was disappointed that the virtual drivers provided by VirtualBox had such poor VESA support. Just now I checked the VirtualBox Win98 installation I have on my Windows 8 machine, and was surprised that I had installed SciTech Doctor there! But despite that, very few high resolution modes worked properly (not even 640x480x256) , which is probably why I abandoned that setup before I got very far. Why I love DosBox for Fractint tinkering is that all kinds of VESA modes are built in. My Windows has a native resolution of 1920x1200 to match my 24" monitor. VESAINFO reports that 1600x1200x256 is available and it works fine under DOSBox. I think one could even be running the host operating system with lower resolution than 1600x1200 and you could still create 1600x1200 images. The expert, of course, is Tim. Thanks, but this I doubt! I intend to resume experiments with environments for running Fractint. And I also am rescuing an old development environment I have not used in a very long time. Tim BTW I finally corrected my Gmail "fractint" filter, and was chagrined to notice that Jim Muth hadn't posted in a week. I hope all is well with Jim. I will see replies in the mailing list better now.