Graphics card for Fractint
Fractaliers My long used 32MB Matrox millenium G400 graphics card which has supported my 1600x1200 use of Fractint for many years failed this week and in my haste to get back computer function I purchased an Nvidia GForce Max 400( not much choice) card inexpensively from a local computer store. I was surprised to find that not only would this card nor run Fractint but it would not allow any DOS programs to be run. Under Windows 98SE on my 1Ghz Athlon Thunderbird PC it does support all the modes allowed by the monitor upto 1600x1200. After opening DOS from from the Windows Shutdown menu and attempted to run Fractint or a smaller DOS appliication the message that is displayed indicates there is not enough memmory. Attempts to run DOS apps. from Windows similary indicate there is not enough memory. Clearly with 768 MB RAM and no other applications this message means something else. Presumably since the DOS MEM /c/p command shows 455 K of usable memory the problem is that the driver software for the Nvidia card does not load any DOS drivers. Does anyone know if there are DOS drivers for this card and if not what alternative choice of inexpensive card is now available( does the Matrox G550 support Fractint?) .The Matrox G400 seems to be no longer available. Ian Entwistle --
What I've heard up to now is of nVidia having well implemented VESA 3.0 support. Unfortunately, having a card with VESA 2.0 or 3.0 doesn't guarantee any useful VESA modes (normally a program in need of graphic output under VESA is expected to ask the card which modes it provides - if there are none useful for the program, tough luck). On Matrox' website they still have the G450, which is essentially a shrunk G400 (shrunk as in shrunk semiconductor die = needs only passive cooling, not shrunk in capabilities). If you don't mind pulling down a few Megabytes, they have the user manuals freely available as PDF files for all their cards, so you could look up which VESA modes a particular model supports. Regards, Gerald
On Sun, 18 Jan 2004, Fracwood wrote:
other applications this message means something else. Presumably since the DOS MEM /c/p command shows 455 K of usable memory the problem is that the driver software for the Nvidia card does not load any DOS drivers.
You might want to look at the simtel archives for a VESA driver that isn't specific to nvidia. I'm pretty sure I saw a couple there, but ATI writes BIOS, so I haven't tried them, even though I hav wanted to test the 16 color VESA modes that ATI doesn't write BIOS for (truecolor only). The last patchlevel I tried didn't let me edit the palette in truecolor modes, and it had _way too many_ more options in the view-window than the 256 color modes. These options duplicated the functions of _other_ window parameters, at least in name.
participants (3)
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fracwood＠argonet.co.uk -
Gerald K. Dobiasovsky -
SherLok Merfy