After my experiences with Virtual PC 4.3 reported earlier, I've
been following Nick's suggestion to try Virtual PC 5.0 which,
according to him, is supposed to be faster than the previous
version.
DOS under or in Virtual PC 5.0 IS in fact significantly faster than
in 4.3 - but only where video is not involved (or only involved
in text mode). In other words: Unfortunately, the calculation of
fractals in Fractint in DOS in Virtual PC 5.0 in Windows XP on
a 2 GHz Pentium4 is still SLOWER than, for example, on a 700
MHz Pentium III. (This is "empirical evidence". I don't know why
this is so. But there have been hints that the chip instructions and
DOS are not really on good terms...)
So, for the time being there does not seem to be a reasonable
or convenient way to run Fractint under the Windows XP OS
software.
At least there is a way to exploit the benefits of some fast pieces
of hardware.
I've tried Tony's idea: Installing Fractint on a (newly created) small
FAT 16 partition (2 GB max), booting with a DOS floppy and running
makefcfg.
Result: Almost everything I was looking and hoping for. It is FAST!. It
is considerably faster than on my 700 and 800 MHz Pentium IIIs. And I
managed to generate the following video modes including 1600x1200x
256 - in fact this a copy of the fractint.cfg produced with makefcfg (my
card being a NVidia GeForce4 MX 460):
; FRACTINT.CFG File
;key name of adapter/mode | AX | BX | CX | DX |mode| x | y |clr|
comments
;==========================================================================
=======
F2 ,VESA Color Palette Mode ,4f02,130, 0, 0, 28, 320, 200,
256,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
F3 ,VESA Color Palette Mode ,4f02,134, 0, 0, 28, 320, 240,
256,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
F4 ,VESA Color Palette Mode ,4f02,131, 0, 0, 28, 320, 400,
256,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
F5 ,VESA Color Palette Mode ,4f02,100, 0, 0, 28, 640, 400,
256,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
F6 ,VESA Color Palette Mode ,4f02,101, 0, 0, 28, 640, 480,
256,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
F7 ,VESA Color Palette Mode ,4f02,103, 0, 0, 28, 800, 600,
256,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
F8 ,VESA Color Palette Mode ,4f02,105, 0, 0, 28,1024, 768,
256,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
F9 ,VESA Color Palette Mode ,4f02,107, 0, 0, 28,1280,1024,
256,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
F10 ,VESA Color Palette Mode ,4f02,147, 0, 0, 28,1400,1050,
256,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
SF1 ,VESA Color Palette Mode ,4f02,145, 0, 0, 28,1600,1200,
256,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
SF2 ,VESA RGB 565 ,4f02,10E, 0, 0, 28, 320, 200,
64k,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
SF3 ,VESA RGB 565 ,4f02,135, 0, 0, 28, 320, 240,
64k,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
SF4 ,VESA RGB 565 ,4f02,132, 0, 0, 28, 320, 400,
64k,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
SF5 ,VESA RGB 565 ,4f02,13D, 0, 0, 28, 640, 400,
64k,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
SF6 ,VESA RGB 565 ,4f02,111, 0, 0, 28, 640, 480,
64k,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
SF7 ,VESA RGB 565 ,4f02,114, 0, 0, 28, 800, 600,
64k,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
SF8 ,VESA RGB 565 ,4f02,117, 0, 0, 28,1024, 768,
64k,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
SF9 ,VESA RGB 565 ,4f02,11A, 0, 0, 28,1280,1024,
64k,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
SF10,VESA RGB 565 ,4f02,148, 0, 0, 28,1400,1050,
64k,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
CF1 ,VESA RGB 565 ,4f02,146, 0, 0, 28,1600,1200,
64k,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
CF2 ,VESA xRGB 8888 ,4f02,10F, 0, 0, 28, 320, 200,
16m,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
CF3 ,VESA xRGB 8888 ,4f02,136, 0, 0, 28, 320, 240,
16m,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
CF4 ,VESA xRGB 8888 ,4f02,133, 0, 0, 28, 320, 400,
16m,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
CF5 ,VESA xRGB 8888 ,4f02,13E, 0, 0, 28, 640, 400,
16m,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
CF6 ,VESA xRGB 8888 ,4f02,112, 0, 0, 28, 640, 480,
16m,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
CF7 ,VESA xRGB 8888 ,4f02,115, 0, 0, 28, 800, 600,
16m,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
CF8 ,VESA xRGB 8888 ,4f02,118, 0, 0, 28,1024, 768,
16m,VESA mode from OEM NVidia
Hope this helps.
Hans-Joachim