################################################################# From: "Albrecht Niekamp" <Albrecht.niekamp@t-online.de>

But if I restore a saved image, it also is destroyed as soon I try to call a text screen.

Did this happen with: textsafe=save in sstools.ini? I use textsafe=save on my vanilla Gateway 400MHz Pentium II under Win98 and I don't lose restored images when I switch to a text screen and back -- and the speed is OK. -----------------------------------------------------------

The textwindow can be called by the cool switch and the monitor reawakens, but the image is gone.

What are you referring to by the phrase "cool switch"? ----------------------------------------------------------- These problems are almost certainly related to your graphics card and/or its drivers. As a last resort: I note that nick.grasso@nasrecruitment.com writes: "You could try buying a new video card. Be sure to get one that supports the old DOS VESA modes. The old Matrox cards used to be good." ------------------------------------------------------------ This is what the Fractint 20.04 docs say about textsafe= : "TEXTSAFE=yes|no|bios|save When you switch from a graphics image to text mode (e.g. when you use <F1> while a fractal is on display), Fractint remembers the graphics image, and restores it when you return from the text mode. This should be no big deal - there are a number of well-defined ways Fractint could do this which *should* work on any video adapter. They don't - every fast approach we've tried runs into a bug on one video adapter or another. So, we've implemented a fast way which works on most adapters in most modes as the default, and added this parameter for use when the default approach doesn't work. If you experience the following problems, please fool around with this parameter to try to fix the problem: o Garbled image, or lines or dashes on image, when returning to image after going to menu, <tab> display, or help. o Blank screen when starting Fractint. The problems most often occur in higher resolution modes. We have not encountered them at all in modes under 320x200x256 - for those modes Fractint always uses a fast image save/restore approach. Textsafe options: yes: This is the default. When switching to/from graphics, Fractint saves just that part of video memory which EGA/VGA adapters are supposed to modify during the mode changes. no: This forces use of monochrome 640x200x2 mode for text displays (when there is a high resolution graphics image to be saved.) This choice is fast but uses chunky and colorless characters. If it turns out to be the best choice for you, you might want to also specify "textcolors=mono" for a more consistent appearance in text screens.  Fractint Version 20.04 Page 136 bios: This saves memory in the same way as textsafe=yes, but uses the adapter's BIOS routines to save/restore the graphics state. This approach is fast and ought to work on all adapters. Sadly, we've found that very few adapters implement this function perfectly. save: It should work on all adapters in all modes but it can be slow. It tells Fractint to save/restore the entire image. Expanded or extended memory is used for the save if you have enough available; otherwise a temporary disk file is used. The speed of textsafe=save will be acceptable on some machines but not others. If this method is too slow, try the other textsafe modes. The speed depends on: o Cpu and video adapter speed. o Whether enough expanded or extended memory is available. o Video mode of image being remembered. A few special modes are *very* slow compared to the rest. The slow ones are: 2 and 4 color modes with resolution higher than 640x480; custom modes for ATI EGA Wonder, Paradise EGA-480, STB, Compaq portable 386, AT&T 6300, and roll your own video modes implemented with customized YOURVID.C code. If you want to tune Fractint to use different "textsafe" options for different video modes, see "Customized Video Modes, FRACTINT.CFG" (p. 155). (E.g. you might want to use the slower textsafe=save approach just for a few high-resolution modes which have problems with textsafe=yes.)" (Get the complete docs by typing FRACTINT MAKEDOC in a DOS window whose current directory is the Fractint directory. This creates the file: FRACTINT.DOC I renamed FRACTINT.DOC to FRACTINT.TXT to associate it with a text editor that starts up more quickly than MS Word.) - Hal Lane ######################### # hallane@earthlink.net # ######################### ################################################################# -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.19/93 - Release Date: 9/8/05