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I am still having trouble, though. Seems that no matter what higher video mode I choose, it says it's not available . . . What is limiting me in that? Do I need to change something else first, like my actual monitor resolution?? I must be dense . . . Sorry.
Thanks ever so much for your guidance!
Kim
Do I need to change something else first, like my actual monitor resolution??
No. Fractint sends your graphics card a series of commands to put it into whatever DOS graphics display resolution you have told Fractint to use to display images at. Each time you change the graphics resolution Fractint sends new commands to your graphics card. Today's video monitors are smart enough to detect whatever resolution (within their capability) they are being asked to display and automatically switch to it. Kim, I recommend that you do this first: 1)
...run MAKEFCFG.EXE to set your choices of resolution based upon your system's hardware and driver configuration.
This program modifies your original FRACTINT.CFG file so I recommend that *you* make a backup copy of it before running MAKEFCFG.EXE even though *it* creates a backup file. I believe that running MAKEFCFG.EXE twice will overwrite *its* backup of your original file. Your distribution of FRACTINT 20.0 contains a copy of MAKEFCFG.EXE and MAKEFCFG.TXT, its instructions. I have placed a copy of MAKEFCFG.TXT below. 2) If you still have problems after running MAKEFCFG.EXE you may have a problem with your modern graphics card having trouble running higher resolution DOS graphics modes. I have placed a copy of the section of Fractint's manual that speaks about this below. 3) If you still have problems consult further with the folks here at fractint@mailman.xmission.com 4) Can you please tell us what version of Windows you are using and the manufacturer and model number of your graphics card? The place you obtained your computer from should be able to provide you with this information if you do not know it.
Then there is the alternative: Disk-Video Mode.
Disk-Video Mode allows someone whose graphics card cannot display higher resolution DOS video modes to calculate images using Fractint at any desired resolution and then display the resulting .gif images with almost any Windows image display program. You can locate an interesting image with Fractint at a resolution that your graphics card can display and then use Disk-Video Mode to create higher resolution versions of the image. I do this regularly. Instructions for doing this are in FRACTINT.DOC (see below). You could use the Disk-Video Mode method if you determine that your computer cannot display higher resolution DOS images. I strongly recommend that you create the documentation for Fractint as Paul (P.N.L.) recommended. Typing the command (see below) into a DOS command window will create the file: FRACTINT.DOC. Rename the file to FRACTINT.DOC.TXT since the file is not in the Microsoft Word format. It is a complete description of all the features of Fractint and is a well-formatted ASCII text file with a table of contents. You do not need to print it out -- almost any ASCII text viewing program can display its contents and search for terms within its text. Try double-clicking FRACTINT.DOC.TXT to see what program Windows uses as your default text display program. Fractint's documentation is also available on the web: http://spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/findex.html#seach_anchor You can use a search engine to find all locations of a particular term within the web-based text: At www.Google.com I use a search of the following form: site:spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/ <whatever_you_want_to_search_for> e.g.: site:spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/ "Disk-Video" If you click Google's underlined "cached" link, Google will highlight the term you searched for in yellow in the displayed text. This is very helpful when your search term is buried somewhere in a long page of text. Just scroll down the long page moderately quickly looking for a flash of yellow to scroll by.
By running the following from a DOS prompt, you can produce the manual with all of the instructions [for Fractint]. FRACTINT.EXE MAKEDOC
Use your latest version of fractint to do this. Note that this document is not a tutorial -- it is a reference manual. You should use Google or another search engine to find tutorials on the web. They are very useful since they tell of tips and tricks as well as what sequences of commands produce what results and often include pictures. There are some tutorial links at: "Fractint Tutorial pages" and "Information currently available" at: http://spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/fractint.html Unfortunately many of the links at: http://home.san.rr.com/jayrhill/iFAQ/Resource.htm no longer point to existing web pages -- but there are still a few valuable ones. Please let us know of the results of your efforts to use higher resolutions. The more detailed the information you can give us, the better we can respond to your situation. - Hal Lane ######################### # hallane@earthlink.net <mailto:hallane@earthlink.net> # ######################### ################################################################# Excerpt from FRACTINT.DOC: ################################################################# Fractint Version 20.0 Page 140 6. Hardware Support 6.1 Notes on Video Modes, "Standard" and Otherwise Alas, in this day of Windows, video adapter manufacturers do not have much incentive to support DOS video modes. Fractint can support any video modes included in your board's VESA video bios. Many otherwise good boards do not include the higher resolution modes in their bios even though those modes are supported in the manufacturer's Windows driver. Fractint users are particularly fond of the 1600x1200 mode. If you want to use this mode, make sure your video board supports it. Some boards that have given good results are boards from STB, various versions of Matrox Millennium, and boards from several manufacturers using Nvidia Riva chip sets. Using high resolution video modes poses a second challenge for fractint users. That is that the VESA standard does not have standard settings for this mode, so you will have to edit the fractint.cfg file to support your board. You can run the program makefcfg.exe that comes with fractint to generate entries for your fractint.cfg file. Finally, even if your video board VESA Bios supports high resolution video modes, it probably doesn't come with a utility that allows you to set the vertical refresh. If the vertical refresh is set for 60 Hz or less, you may see flicker and be subject to headaches. Fortunately, there is a wonderful freeware utility by Rob Muller that allows you to control the vertical refresh for any VESA video mode. Of course your monitor still needs to be able to support higher rates -- software can't help that. To get Rob's unirefresh program, email Rob at r.muller@student.utwente.nl or check out http://home.student.utwente.nl/r.muller/unirefresh True to the spirit of public-domain programming, Fractint makes only a limited attempt to verify that your video adapter can run in the mode you specify, or even that an adapter is present, before writing to it. So if you use the "video=" command line parameter, check it before using a new version of Fractint - the old key combo may now call an ultraviolet holographic mode. ################################################################# Contents of the file MAKECFG.TXT: ################################################################# Makefcfg 1.0 -- A Fractint video utility by The Stone Soup Group Makefcfg reads your VESA Video BIOS and writes a Fractint fractint.cfg file with VESA video modes set up. Syntax: makefcfg [commands ...] optional commands (space separated) include: 16 -- causes 16 color modes to be included true -- causes true color modes to be included <fkey> -- starting Fractint video mode key. <fkey> is one of F1, F2, ..., AF1, AF2, ..., CF1, CF1 ... overwrite -- program will overwrite fractcfg.old if it exists (note: fractint.cfg is always saved to fractcfg.old) You can abbreviate the overwrite and true commands with 'o' and 't'. The idea of allowing you to set the starting function key is to facilitate inserting the resulting fractint.cfg file inside your existing fractint.cfg. When using this command, don't type in '<' or '>'; these symbols just indicate that <fkey> is not literally what you type - you type in F1, F2, etc. This utility is particularly useful for setting up Fractint to use semi-standard VESA video modes such as 1600x1200. As of Fractint version 20 the truecolor modes are still not very useful, so this capability looks to the future. Example: makefcfg 16 AF1 overwrite will create an fractint.cfg file with 256 color modes, 16 color modes, but no truecolor modes, with the function keys starting with AF1. Tim Wegner September, 1999 ################################################################# -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.6/378 - Release Date: 6/28/06