JackOfTradeZ@comcast.net wrote:
DOSBOX rocks? Uhh ... maybe, but why not just use real genuine DOS ? You gotta be losing some performance with all the hardware/software translation in any emulation setup.
What am I missing here?
Does a given fractal actually render faster in DOSBOX on a current system then it would in DOS/Win9X on a P3-933 for example?
I don't know if DosBox would be any faster than running native DOS on the hardware (probably not, might depend on what else the system was being used for). But I would think it would enable you to run DOS Fractint on modern systems that DOS won't run on. For instance, my main desktop PC here has a 1TB hard drive. Can DOS even boot a drive that large? PC hardware is so cheap, and so readily available, that having a dedicated box for fractals is easy to do. A friend of mine just replaced the compact PC box he was using for his home's multimedia server with a new dual-core netbook. He gave me his old system. It's got a 2GHz Celeron, 1GB of RAM, and 80GB hard drive. I'll have to see if any of the various DOS's (MSDOS 5, FreeDOS) I have here can run on it. IIRC, there was or is a 32-bit DOS, too - yes, FreeDOS-32, plus maybe someone could track down a copy of DR-DOS 8, apparently that was also a 32-bit DOS. IIRC, DOS Fractint can use DPMI memory somehow? -- David gnome@hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community