Hi folks, You're going to kill me for this one! I've been going back through the posts to find the answer but I think it was all discussed about two years ago and those posts have gone! I've just been upgraded to Win XP. No Fractint! Please! Someone tell me how to create a boot disk for Dos from XP! If that's not do-able what must I do? I'm not, by any means, an operating system guru so, if you feel like replying, please aim at a twelve year old thicko! (I can tie my laces, look mum!) Chris
Chris Curnow wrote:
Hi folks,
You're going to kill me for this one! I've been going back through the posts to find the answer but I think it was all discussed about two years ago and those posts have gone!
I've just been upgraded to Win XP. No Fractint!
What happens when you try to start Fractint?
Please! Someone tell me how to create a boot disk for Dos from XP! If that's not do-able what must I do?
You cannot - XP doesn't run DOS. What must you do? You could check around your office for a DOS boot disk, or try one of the free DOS systems around (I have OpenDOS 7.03 around here), or (although this doesn't sound like an option for you) boot a good Linux distro like Knoppix or LibraNet or SuSE or Debian or some others (avoid Fedora or RedHat), try resizing your XP partition, then set up a Linux dual-boot system and run XFractint on it.
I'm not, by any means, an operating system guru so, if you feel like replying, please aim at a twelve year old thicko! (I can tie my laces, look mum!)
Careful, a 12-year-old probably could take care of the problem for you .. ;-) -- David gnome@hawaii.rr.com
Thanks for the fast reply David. From: David Jones
What happens when you try to start Fractint?
Looks good at first, (menu to select screen mode etc) but then black screen all the way until I press Esc a few times to exit Fractint.
You cannot - XP doesn't run DOS. What must you do? You could check around your office for a DOS boot disk, or try one of the free DOS systems around (I have OpenDOS 7.03 around here), or (although this doesn't sound like an option for you) boot a good Linux distro like Knoppix or LibraNet or SuSE or Debian or some others (avoid Fedora or RedHat), try resizing your XP partition, then set up a Linux dual-boot system and run XFractint on it.
Can I download a Dos from the net anywhere? I think I may have the original Dos 6.2 disks in a shoe box in the attic but: a) It'll be a real pain finding the box! And b) They are probably full of dust amd mould!
I'm not, by any means, an operating system guru so, if you feel like replying, please aim at a twelve year old thicko! (I can tie my laces, look mum!)
Careful, a 12-year-old probably could take care of the problem for you .. ;-)
Maybe that's the best bet! Problem is that it's a bit rural around here. Olives and goats are what they're really good at! Oh, and playing shoot 'em ups on the PlayStation they were given for Christmas! Actually there is a guru in the village. I'd forgotten about Carlos the Compute. Problem is that he is almost impossible to find. I'll have a look in the local bars tomorrow! Anyway, thanks for the help! Chris
Chris, since there does not seem to be a reasonable or convenient way to run Fractint under Windows XP (see my reports on trying Virtual PC posted to the mailing list 2 years ago), I recommend following this way to, at least, take advantage of some fast contemporary pieces of hardware (CPU, RAM, graphics card): If you can't manage to get hold of a DOS distribution, maybe it is not so difficult to find someone with a PC running Windows 98 (or Windows 89 SE), enabling you to create a DOS disk. Don't forget to add a (generic) mouse driver. On your machine running XP create a small (max 2 GB) FAT 16 partition (DOS doesn't like XP's native file system, NTFS) and put Fractint there. Boot from the DOS floppy, go to the FAT 16 partition (or logical disk drive) and start Fractint. To generate a valid Fractint configuration file (fractint.cfg) with the appropriate video modes allowed for by your graphics card, use the video utility makefcfg. Basically, that's it. (If you want to be more sophisticated and even more fast, you can put EMM386.sys on your floppy, make DOS autoexec.bat and config.sys run Fractint on a ram drive and, by way of sstool.ini, save params and pics to your Fractint FAT 16 partition (or logical disk drive).) Hope this helps. But probably it isn't a bad idea to go looking for Carlos the Compute in the local bars and ask him to help you a bit with tweaking the DOS configuration files until you get the entries right for your particular PC system. All the best, Hans-Joachim Metzger ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Curnow" <curnow@sapo.pt> To: "Fractint and General Fractals Discussion" <fractint@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 2:34 PM Subject: Re: [Fractint] Oh No! Not again!
Thanks for the fast reply David.
From: David Jones
What happens when you try to start Fractint?
Looks good at first, (menu to select screen mode etc) but then black screen all the way until I press Esc a few times to exit Fractint.
You cannot - XP doesn't run DOS. What must you do? You could check around your office for a DOS boot disk, or try one of the free DOS systems around (I have OpenDOS 7.03 around here), or (although this doesn't sound like an option for you) boot a good Linux distro like Knoppix or LibraNet or SuSE or Debian or some others (avoid Fedora or RedHat), try resizing your XP partition, then set up a Linux dual-boot system and run XFractint on it.
Can I download a Dos from the net anywhere? I think I may have the original Dos 6.2 disks in a shoe box in the attic but: a) It'll be a real pain finding the box! And b) They are probably full of dust amd mould!
I'm not, by any means, an operating system guru so, if you feel like replying, please aim at a twelve year old thicko! (I can tie my laces, look mum!)
Careful, a 12-year-old probably could take care of the problem for you .. ;-)
Maybe that's the best bet! Problem is that it's a bit rural around here. Olives and goats are what they're really good at! Oh, and playing shoot 'em ups on the PlayStation they were given for Christmas!
Actually there is a guru in the village. I'd forgotten about Carlos the Compute. Problem is that he is almost impossible to find. I'll have a look in the local bars tomorrow!
Anyway, thanks for the help!
Chris
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When Chris Curnow wrote:
I've just been upgraded to Win XP. No Fractint!
David Jones asked:
What happens when you try to start Fractint?
Looks good at first, (menu to select screen mode etc) but then black screen all the way until I press Esc a few times to exit Fractint.
How many of the various video modes have you tried, including some of the very low resolutions?? Do any of those settings allow any kind of image at all??
Can I download a Dos from the net anywhere?
I'm not, by any means, an operating system guru so, if you feel like replying, please aim at a twelve year old thicko!
You can get all the files that come on the distributed Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition Boot Disk from the following location. They are in a ZIP file and must be extracted to a floppy: http://www.Nahee.com/Software/ Look for a file called "Win98-SE_Boot.zip". Sincerely, P.N.L. ------------------------------------------------- http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/PNL_Fractals.html http://www.Nahee.com/Fractals/
Thanks guys, you've all been very understanding and helpful. I was a bit apprehrensive when I first posted as I remember the literally hundreds of posts on the subject a couple of years ago! The problem is that I found it impossible to get a legal English version except XT out here! As it's a new machine I thought that perhaps I'd better take the latest Windows. OK. Carlos the (sometimes sober) Compute tonight! If I don't find him I can leave messages on the lines of 'O senhor Chris says he has some new wine for you to try Carlos.' Works every time! But thanks for your time. (And thanks for that link to Nahee Paul, I've put it in the Favourites!) Chris
On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 01:05:55 -1000, David Jones wrote: Chris Curnow wrote:
I'm not, by any means, an operating system guru so, if you feel like replying, please aim at a twelve year old thicko! (I can tie my laces, look mum!)
Careful, a 12-year-old probably could take care of the problem for you .. ;-)
Whereas a university graduate might have problems. Like the best way to open a "child-proof" bottle is usually to give it to a child .... :-) John -- John Lewis, jlewis@clara.net on 21/04/2004
curnow@sapo.pt mentioned that he was having trouble with Windows XP: While I would recommend the DOS boot disk (if only because you can launch Linux _or_ Win32S from it), and the directions are in your helpfiles (search for DOS), the last time I checked, Windows XP with FRACTINT was just messy, not entirely incompatible. I might, someday again, download and unzip FRACTINT into it's own directory, then select automatic EMS and XMS memory types under the properties of the icon for it (right-click on the icon, then guess what might work nicely). The problems are nothing that a restart won't fix, much as the higher resolutions you may hav trouble using are nothing that you can't get with disk-video or batch-mode and any browser.
Just a quick note to say that all has been resolved. I found the Win 98 Startup diskette, (all the way back from 2001!). Sys'ed a new floppy and it booted fine. Luckily the XP stuff has been loaded onto a new NTFS hard disk leaving all my Win98, including Fractint, on the old hard disk. So now the boot disk sees my E: drive as C: and everything seems to work fine. Thanks for your time folks. From: "SherLok Merfy" Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 2:11 PM
While I would recommend the DOS boot disk (if only because you can launch Linux _or_ Win32S from it), and the directions are in your helpfiles (search for DOS), the last time I checked, Windows XP with FRACTINT was just messy, not entirely incompatible. I might, someday again, download and unzip FRACTINT into it's own directory, then select automatic EMS and XMS memory types under the properties of the icon for it (right-click on the icon, then guess what might work nicely).
The problems are nothing that a restart won't fix, much as the higher resolutions you may hav trouble using are nothing that you can't get with disk-video or batch-mode and any browser.
Hurrah! David gnome@hawaii.rr.com On 23 Apr 04, at 17:37, Chris Curnow wrote:
Just a quick note to say that all has been resolved. I found the Win 98 Startup diskette, (all the way back from 2001!). Sys'ed a new floppy and it booted fine. Luckily the XP stuff has been loaded onto a new NTFS hard disk leaving all my Win98, including Fractint, on the old hard disk. So now the boot disk sees my E: drive as C: and everything seems to work fine. Thanks for your time folks.
From: "SherLok Merfy" Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 2:11 PM
While I would recommend the DOS boot disk (if only because you can launch Linux _or_ Win32S from it), and the directions are in your helpfiles (search for DOS), the last time I checked, Windows XP with FRACTINT was just messy, not entirely incompatible. I might, someday again, download and unzip FRACTINT into it's own directory, then select automatic EMS and XMS memory types under the properties of the icon for it (right-click on the icon, then guess what might work nicely).
The problems are nothing that a restart won't fix, much as the higher resolutions you may hav trouble using are nothing that you can't get with disk-video or batch-mode and any browser.
participants (6)
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Chris Curnow -
David Jones -
hajotem -
John Lewis -
Paul N. Lee -
SherLok Merfy