Thanks for your responses to:

Anyone - in JackOTradez's posting to this forum on Sun, 9 Feb 2003 he includes a set of parameters and the formula it refers to. When I use these I get a solid blue screen.

I'm still getting a sold blue screen. Things I have tried unsuccessfully follow: To invoke the .par file, which I have named '6ml08402.par', I hit the '@' key and choose the '6ml08402.par' file and then select the '6ml08402' parameter set (the only one in the file). 1) I tried putting both the par and the formula into the same par file, as suggested. I put the formula 2nd and inserted 'frm:' in front of the formula name. I changed the formula name in the formula from 'MMix4-lake-0084' to 'mmix4-lake-0084' to have the case of the letters in the name match those in the parameter file. The <Tab> screen shows the 'Item file:' as the '6ml08402.par' file. I have found that a file with the name 'mmix_lak.frm' must *not* exist for the formula to be read from the .par file. 2) I have tried placing the formula file in a file named 'mmix_lak.frm' and changing the formula name in the formula from 'MMix4-lake-0084' to 'mmix4-lake-0084' to have the case of the letters in the name match those in the parameter file and *NOT* inserting 'frm:' in front of the formula name. The <Tab> screen shows the 'Item file:' as the 'mmix_lak.frm' file. 3) I have tried placing the formula file in a file named 'mmix_lak.frm' and changing the formula name in the formula from 'MMix4-lake-0084' to 'mmix4-lake-0084' and *inserting* 'frm:' in front of the formula name. I removed the formula definition from the .par file. In this situation I get error messages (which makes sense): 'mmix4-lake-0084' file entry item not found Any key to continue... Could not open file where formula located Any key to continue... Apparently you must *not* have 'frm:' in front of a formula name in a formula file. Note that when no matching formula was found the calculated image was the still the solid blue one! I suspect that this is an important clue (to someone - not me). 4) I have also tried using Robin's Fractint Paste & Go V1.3 utility, changing the name of the formulafile= in the par text window to 'formulafile=pastengo.frm' and changing the formula name in the formula text window from 'MMix4-lake-0084' to 'mmix4-lake-0084' with *no* 'frm:' inserted in front of the formula name. The <Tab> screen shows the 'Item file:' as the 'pastengo.frm' file. The contents of the 'pastengo.par' and 'pastengo.frm' files contain faithful copies of the text I put into the utility's two windows. 5) I have also tried using Robin's Fractint Paste & Go utility, putting *both* the par and the formula info (par 1st) into the par window & removing the 'formulafile=mmix_lak.frm' in the par text window and changing the formula name in the text window from 'MMix4-lake-0084' to 'mmix4-lake-0084' with 'frm:' inserted in front of the formula name. Debug mode of the Paste & Go utility shows 'fractint.exe @pastengo.par/6ml08402' as the command issued. Manually issuing this command in the Fractint directory also creates the blue screen. The <Tab> screen shows the 'Item file:' as the 'pastengo.par' file. The contents of the 'pastengo.par' file contains a faithful copy of the text I put into the utility's parameter window. All five of these methods give a sold blue screen. I am using Fractint V 20.0 (which matches the 'reset=2000' in the .par file) under Windows 98 (orig ed.) on a vanilla Gateway PII 400MHz machine. My SSTOOLS.INI follows: [fractint] textsafe=save sound=off video=SF7 map=goodega.map After creating a blue screen the <Tab> screen is as follows: ########################################## Fractal type: formula Image completed Item name: mmix4-lake-0084 ident Item file: pastengo.par Floating-point flag is activated Savename: fract001 Calculation time: 0:00:18.12 Video: 1024x768x256 SuperVGA/VESA Autodetect Works with most SuperVGA Corners: X Y Top-l -27.3550000223599900 0.1139646348533431 Bot-r -27.5269999776400100 -0.1153686388533431 Bot-l -27.5269999776400100 0.1139646348533431 Ctr-27.4410000000000000 -0.0007020020000000 Mag 1.16279100e+001 X-Mag-Factor 1.0000 Rotation 90.000 Skew -0.000 3: 33.330000000 4: 0.0000 5: 0.200000000 6: 300.000000000 Iteration maximum: 2500 Effective bailout: 25.000000 Press any key to continue, F6 for area, CTRL-TAB for next page ######################################### As a reality check, my copy of Fractint was able to render the Feb 11th, '03 Fractal of the Day and it matches the image at: http://home.att.net/~Fractals_3/FotD_03-02-11.html To create the Fractal of the Day I used Robin's Fractint Paste & Go utility, and put both the parameters and the formula in the parameter window with a 'frm:' in front of the formula. Any further help will be appreciated. - Hal Lane hallane @ compuserve.com