Re: [Fractint] Re: Fractint on XP
I've been experimenting with running Virtual PC 4.3 under XP to find out whether or not I'd be able to make full use of my Pentium4 2 GHz/512 MB RAM machine to accelerate Fractint fractal calculations. Having applied the makefcfg utility to sort out possible VESA problems with my NVidia GeForce4 MX 460 graphics card, I have been able to generate the following resolutions for Fractint (running under DOS under Virtual PC under Windows XP): 640x400x256 640x480x256 800x600x256 1024x768x256 1280x1024x256 With lower or higher resolutions (specified by makefcfg in my fractint.cfg), Virtual PC hung up. I also managed to generate the above resolutions for true colour modes. So, yes, as far as video modes are concerned Virtual PC might be a way to work around the XP limitations. But, there is a but - at least for me. Even calculations of 640x480x256 fractals turned out to be considerably slower than on my Pentium III 700 and 800 MHz PCs. Maybe, there is a way to reconfigure DOS under Virtual PC. I have applied old autoexec.bat and config.sys values from way back when I was really still using DOS, but could not achieve any signficant accelerations. That's why I have given up on trying to run the current Fractint DOS version under XP on my 2 GHz machine. I've decided to wait and hope and pray for the Windows version. Otherwise I'm fine with Fractint on my other PCs (running Windows 98 and ME). Hans-Joachim PS: Something else comes to mind while reporting these experiences with Virtual PC. Has anyone ever tried VMware Workstation? Since it is a virtual machine software letting you run multiple operating systems (like, for instance, Windows and Linux) on a single piece of hardware, maybe it is more useful for running Fractint on modern machines than Virtual PC is.
My next piece of conspicuous consumerism will be to purchase a "bare-bones" 2+ Gig P4 with one of of the older fractint "vesa" compatible video cards and install Dos 7 (Win95/98 loading in command prompt mode only!) on it solely for the purpose of rendering Fractint images. I have also experimented with another strategy which has really improved my image rendering time. I write the parmeter file to run in Fractint, then using the same par file created for Fractint I render the image in UltraFractal 2/3. This works fine a lot of the time, however some formlas and parameters don't exactly transpose across to UF perfectly so sometimes, I get an error message. Since at the moment I'm not skilled enough at parameter and formula writing to track down the "glitch", I then go ahead and render in Fractint. It's interesting that there is still a significant group of folk who still prefer using fractint to "create" fractal images, rather than moving on "completely" to UF 2/3. I'd like to hear some you other fractolieri's reasons for remaining with fractint. All the best, TG ----- Original Message ----- From: "Hans-Joachim Metzger" <hjmetzger@compuserve.com> To: <fractint@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2002 8:18 AM Subject: Re: [Fractint] Re: Fractint on XP I've been experimenting with running Virtual PC 4.3 under XP to find out whether or not I'd be able to make full use of my Pentium4 2 GHz/512 MB RAM machine to accelerate Fractint fractal calculations. Having applied the makefcfg utility to sort out possible VESA problems with my NVidia GeForce4 MX 460 graphics card, I have been able to generate the following resolutions for Fractint (running under DOS under Virtual PC under Windows XP): 640x400x256 640x480x256 800x600x256 1024x768x256 1280x1024x256 With lower or higher resolutions (specified by makefcfg in my fractint.cfg), Virtual PC hung up. I also managed to generate the above resolutions for true colour modes. So, yes, as far as video modes are concerned Virtual PC might be a way to work around the XP limitations. But, there is a but - at least for me. Even calculations of 640x480x256 fractals turned out to be considerably slower than on my Pentium III 700 and 800 MHz PCs. Maybe, there is a way to reconfigure DOS under Virtual PC. I have applied old autoexec.bat and config.sys values from way back when I was really still using DOS, but could not achieve any signficant accelerations. That's why I have given up on trying to run the current Fractint DOS version under XP on my 2 GHz machine. I've decided to wait and hope and pray for the Windows version. Otherwise I'm fine with Fractint on my other PCs (running Windows 98 and ME). Hans-Joachim PS: Something else comes to mind while reporting these experiences with Virtual PC. Has anyone ever tried VMware Workstation? Since it is a virtual machine software letting you run multiple operating systems (like, for instance, Windows and Linux) on a single piece of hardware, maybe it is more useful for running Fractint on modern machines than Virtual PC is. _______________________________________________ Fractint mailing list Fractint@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fractint
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Hans-Joachim Metzger -
Tony Parker