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****		      FAST FPU FRACTAL FUN (FFFF) v1.0		      ****
****		(C) 12/03/1995	Daniele Paccaloni [DDT/HBT]	      ****
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***	Contact me in Internet at:    paccalon@linux.infosquare.it     ***
***			       or     paccalon@ghost.dsi.unimi.it      ***
**************************************************************************

0.0 : INTRODUCTION

Another Mandelbrot set generator.... why should i care ? I have plenty.
Well... there are 3 main reasons for you should care:

1) FFFF is the fastest hi-res Mandelbrot generator. Even faster than
   Fractint when using floating point maths.

2) FFFF is SMALL !!! Executable is 1.8 KBytes ! You can fit it in any
   disk and it uses only 4 sectors !!
   Think of it: the size of a virus BUT NOT a virus ! :)
   Or: a program smaller than its DOC !

3) FFFF is FREEWARE! But if you want to send me money, hardware, food,
   girls, please DO IT ! :)
   You are free to use FFFF and to copy it, but you should not modify
   the original archive.




1.0 : WHAT DO I NEED TO RUN FFFF ? A PENTIUM ?

No. Evenif the code is pentium optimized you just need a 80386 (at least)
and of course a math coprocessor.
If you have a pentium you will get the REAL performance !
Any of the following processors will run FFFF:
 * 80386    + 80387
 * 80486SX  + 80487
 * 80486DX
 * 80486DX2
 * 80486DX4
 * Pentium  (Don't worry, the Mandelbrot formula has no FDIV inside! :).
 * P6 ?     (not tested yet :)

You also need a VGA and a recent mouse driver (it should support graphics
modes). Don't worry, all the latest mouse drivers do this.
If you can't see the mouse arrow when the calculation is complete, then
it's time you get a newer mouse driver !




1.1 : HOW IS IT POSSIBLE ? FASTER THAN FRACTINT ?

Well, not always.  Fractint, at low zoom levels, uses integer-calculations
and will be faster. Also, Fractint has a guessing algorithm, nice trick
to speedup calculation of areas of the same color.
When is FFFF faster ??	Well, when you go deep-zooming inside complicated
areas of the mandelbrot set (like i do :).
If you only want to see the entire set then use Fractint ! Fractint also uses
mirroring on the X axis, that halves the time to render the entire set but
is completely useless when you start to zoom !



1.2 : HOW DO I USE FFFF ?

When you start FFFF, it will calculate the entire Mandelbrot set.
When it's done there will appear the mouse pointer arrow and you can
zoom. (If you move the mouse but can't see the arrow, then you got an OLD
mouse driver).
You can stop the calculation any time, just keep ESC pressed until it stops !
Remember that when the calculation is in progress you can't see the mouse
arrow, nor you can zoom.
Now, click on the upper left corner of the box you want to zoom and KEEP the
button pressed. Release it when you are on the lower right corner of the box
to zoom. Please note that you will NOT see the box. Sorry but i hadn't time
to code the box-routine (maybe next version, ok ?) and i think anyone is
clever enough to do it without seeing a box :)
If you want to increase/decrease the number of iterations used by the formula
just keep the right mouse button pressed and move the mouse to the right/left.
The default number of iterations is 255, you'll want to increase it when
zooming if the black region is too large (up to 65535).
More iterations mean more time to render !
If you zoom too many times then you will see the screen filled all with
same-color pixels... congratulations, you've reached the 10^15 zoom
limit of the floating point coprocessor.
The fractal trip is one way (i.e. you can't zoom OUT) but did you ever
zoom out on a Mandelbrot set ??? :)  If you want to zoom on another area
please exit from FFFF (using the ESC key) and run it again!
What did you expect ? I coded the program in one day !



1.3 : FUTURE RELEASES

I am trying to improve the speed even more using the advanced monitoring
features of the Pentium CPU !
Planning to add SVGA support (and perhaps 16M colors support).
If i get enough messages of people saying i should improve the GUI, i will :)
But gimme feedback !



1.4 : FINAL WORDS !

I coded FFFF just to show that on an MSDOS machine there can be nice programs
even if they do not need 10 MB of disk space (or require 8 Mb of RAM).
The secret for FAST&SMALL is 100% MACHINE CODE !!!
Let me know for any comment or suggestion !

Contact me:

EMAIL : paccalon@linux.infosquare.it  (use this if you can)
    or	paccalon@ghost.dsi.unimi.it

MAIL  : Daniele Paccaloni
	 Via Agadir 10/A,
      20097 S.Donato (MILAN)
	      ITALY