I can now build the classic DOS fractint [in XP.] Neat! A complete DOS build environment!
My fondest memory of WinXP is that it could run half a dozen instances of Disk Video Fractint Fractals in as many separate DOSes -- with different zooms into the same fractal at the same time -- and they didn't overwrite one another's "disks," as happened when I attempted to do this on some other version of Windows. (I'm not sure which one.) - Hal Lane ######################## # hallane@earthlink.net ######################## -----Original Message----- From: Fractint <fractint-bounces@mailman.xmission.com> On Behalf Of Timothy Wegner Sent: Monday, March 9, 2020 3:07 PM To: Fractint and General Fractals Discussion <fractint@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: [Fractint] Blast from the past - XP lives and can build Fractint! I'm guessing many on this mailing list are of a certain age like I am, so you might appreciate this story. I'm a (very old and slow) runner, and hurt my knee about a month ago, so had a lot of extra time on my hands while I recovered. (I'm back to 15 miles a week or so, and doing fine, thanks.) So with the extra time not running I decided to tackle organizing the many old hard drives I have lying around. I have built a number of computers over the years, and always built them with removable drives. My oldest working computer has one parallel ATA Lian Li caddy, and I have a bunch of drives that fit it. One 80 gb drive has a note that it ran XP but I assumed it was for my old XP machine that died a while ago, along with my last working Fractint build environment. My ancient memory is that XP does not do well booting on the wrong computer, but for no good reason, I tried booting the drive. Voila! XP came up along with a working Fractint build environment! From the time stamps, looks like this was last booted about five years ago! I am not clear if this drive ran XP on the now-dead computer, or if it worked with the "newer" vintage 2007 computer I tried it on. I'm guessing the latter, since it booted with no obvious issues. In any case, I can now build the classic DOS fractint. I don't want to mislead anyone, I'm not about to suddenly resume developing the classic Fractint, and I'm not sure I want to get sucked into all the issues surrounding an old OS like Windows XP. That said, it gives me a certain nostalgic pleasure to know I can. Jonathan has largely avoided this by working with the newer Windows SDL environment. I don't even know if he could compile the DOS fractint if he was so inclined. Tim _______________________________________________ Fractint mailing list Fractint@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fractint