. DOSBOX rocks? Uhh ... maybe, but why not just use real genuine DOS ? You gotta be losing some performance with all the hardware/software translation in any emulation setup. What am I missing here? Does a given fractal actually render faster in DOSBOX on a current system then it would in DOS/Win9X on a P3-933 for example? .
JackOfTradeZ@comcast.net wrote:
DOSBOX rocks? Uhh ... maybe, but why not just use real genuine DOS ? You gotta be losing some performance with all the hardware/software translation in any emulation setup.
What am I missing here?
Does a given fractal actually render faster in DOSBOX on a current system then it would in DOS/Win9X on a P3-933 for example?
I don't know if DosBox would be any faster than running native DOS on the hardware (probably not, might depend on what else the system was being used for). But I would think it would enable you to run DOS Fractint on modern systems that DOS won't run on. For instance, my main desktop PC here has a 1TB hard drive. Can DOS even boot a drive that large? PC hardware is so cheap, and so readily available, that having a dedicated box for fractals is easy to do. A friend of mine just replaced the compact PC box he was using for his home's multimedia server with a new dual-core netbook. He gave me his old system. It's got a 2GHz Celeron, 1GB of RAM, and 80GB hard drive. I'll have to see if any of the various DOS's (MSDOS 5, FreeDOS) I have here can run on it. IIRC, there was or is a 32-bit DOS, too - yes, FreeDOS-32, plus maybe someone could track down a copy of DR-DOS 8, apparently that was also a 32-bit DOS. IIRC, DOS Fractint can use DPMI memory somehow? -- David gnome@hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community
JackOfTradeZ wrote:
You gotta be losing some performance with all the hardware/software translation in any emulation setup.
What am I missing here?
David has a good reply to this also. Let me just say, I have a Win7 64 bit machine that I built without Fractint in mind, and I got DOSBOX and Fractint up and running in just a few minutes. This is a huge advantage for people casually using the DOS fractint or who want to use it along side other things they are doing. Apparently it works everywhere - Linux and MacOS also. There is no question that DOSBOX slows things down a lot. I don't know if a DOSBOX environment would be satisfactory for someone doing really serious fractal generation as some here do. My impression was it behaved pretty well, maybe speed is less an issue than bug-free execution. But I wouldn't argue. There are alternatives - Rich's windows version and Jonathan's windows version (in XP compatability mode). I haven't done benchmarks to see which is faster. Two DOSBOX tips. 1. I found I couldn't type "\" needed for the "mount c c:\fractint" command. One cure is to use alt-92. A better one is to put the mount command in the moral equivalent of autoexec.bat. I haven't tried that, but it would be a real convenience. 2. I found a couldn't save a fractal. The cure was to right click on the DOSBOX icon on the Windows 7 64bit desktop, and select "troubleshoot compatability". Some magic happened and then it was OK from then on, this was a one time fix. All the above said, if one can boot native DOS (or FreeDOS) that would undoubtedlywork well and would probably runh faster. You'd have to use a PS-2 mouse and keyboard unless there are DOS USB drivers, and youy'd have to maintain an MS-DOS partition. I'd be curious to try, but not enough hours in the day to try everything I am curious about ... :-) Tim
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david -
JackOfTradeZ＠comcast.net -
Tim Wegner