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fractint-digest        Tuesday, March 10 1998        Volume 01 : Number 128




----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 19:58:35 -0800
From: Wizzle <[e-mail]>
Subject: re: (fractint) documentation

Les

Thanks for the pars and the sstools.ini fix. I'm presuming I can add the line

 recordcolors=yes

pretty much any where in sstools.ini? For some obscure reason......just
every now and then......(without human intervention, of course).....my pars
don't save the colors. Very strange. Actually, why would we want to save
the pars without the colors? Strange feature.

I tried the esher julia formula too and didn't get anything much right off.
Volterra_whatever was Very responsive ....like our friendly gravijuli series.

Angela

p.s.  I know the creams4.map doesn't look too creamy at this point....it's
been thru a bunch of iterations because the colors and black areas seem to
be placed well for many fractals.

p.s.s. another apology for posting a par sans colors

At 11:03 PM 3/8/98 -0000, you wrote:
>Hi Angela,
>
>>> I noticed in my reading a new-ish standard formula....voltera_lotta
>>> The color map is a really good one to re-do in other colors.
>
>Could you re-post the par with the colors included?
>BTW, you can force Fractint to always write the color code to the par by
>including the statement
>recordcolors=yes
>in you sstools.ini file
>


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------------------------------

Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 20:18:25 -0800
From: Wizzle <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) SStools....

Ray...

sstools.ini "ships" with fractint under the disguise of

sstools2.ini

What you need to do is read up a bit on the features sstools.ini controls
at the Fractint homepage....

http://spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/findex.html

or pay attention to postings on the list......or get Jay Hill to tell you
where his great explanation of sstools.ini is posted (I remember it being
somewhere).

Then...decide how you want to modify sstools2.ini (you can do that in
notepad) and save the file as sstools.ini in your Fractint directory.

Here is my sstools.ini file

[fractint]
; note: replace (for example) "c:\fract\map\tworain.map" with
; the correct path on your drive so fractint can find the files from anywhere.
map=c:\fractint\gen-2.map
parmfile=c:\fractint\pars\mar98.par
recordcolors=yes
formulafile=c:\fractint\mar98.frm
lfile=c:\fractint\fractint.l
ifsfile=c:\fractint\fractint.ifs
autokeyname=c:\fractint\key
;filename=c:\fractint
savename=c:\fractint\83avw001
;printfile=c:\fract\work
workdir=c:\fractint
;tmpdir=c:\fract\work
video=sf6
savetime=60
;nice colors...
;textcolors=//70/17/78/1e/5f/07/03/17/1f/1e/3f/5e/70///0f/07/17/1e//////0d/5
f/57/0e/05

[Winfract]
WinfractPosition=-5, -5
ImageWidth=1024
ImageHeight=768
ZoomOut=False
WindowSizing=False
CoordinateBoxOpen=False
ZoomBoxOpen=False
CoordBoxPosition=712, 49

The features I found most useful were:

1. a new default colormap (I use one I made myself called gen-2.map and
which is available in my wizmaps.zip kit at
http://wizzle.simplenet.com/fractals/wizmaps/wizmaps.htm)
2.  more descriptive filenames for saving gifs. I use a naming convention
that I change each month so I can tell one "batch" from another
3. defaulting to the current months pars and formulas (which i call
mar98.par and mar98.frm for example) - I re-set this every month but it
helps me keep up with the list
4. selecting a default video setting (I like sf6)

There are oodles of other features available as I've been learning here on
the list....just haven't had the time or need to incorporate them all.

Angela

At 04:52 PM 3/9/98 -0700, you wrote:
>Hi Kragen
>        Thanks for your kind response.  And I'll put a question to you right
>away. (There are so many to ask - but number one...)
>        What is SSTOOLS.INI file?  I've looked high and low for it, but can
>not find such a thing.  I've looked in the Fractint listing (file-?) and it
>is not there.  And, even if it were, when I have tried to enter one of the
>listings, as, for instance, an indicated map (i.e. 'Alien Map)- I get a
>drop-down box saying, in effect, "Can't open.  Use program that you got it
>from" or, some such wording.  So then what?  Is there a place in the
>Fractint program that I can push a button and, lo and behold, there is the
>SSTOOLS.INI.?
>        More buttons than I care to imagine.  But it is great when those
>colorful designs generate - like a monstrous ship appearing out of a heavy
fog.
>        Thanks again.  Hope this will clear up mystery #1.
>                                Ray
>
>
>-
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>

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------------------------------

Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 20:29:48 -0800
From: Wizzle <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) Text won't print

Ray....

Many web pages are pretty difficult to print because we web authors like to
have dark backgrounds with light print......I'm afraid I'm a prime culprit.
 However, downloading instructions in a form that will print well is easy.....

1. with the page you want to print open in your browser....select
"file....save as" which will download the page with the html code to your
own computer....stick it in a folder someplace where you can find it
2. open the page you just downloaded in your browser using
"file.....open".....the page should come up against a nice clean white
background which will print the text just fine right from your browser.

Hope that helps

Angela

At 05:11 PM 3/9/98 -0700, you wrote:
>        Linda
>                You did good things making that color-map developing
>tutorial.  But when I try to download it, the only things that print are
>the images and colormaps.  They are beautiful and represantative of what you
>are saying but without the text I can't benefit and learn from them.  My
>brain is too far gone to be able to read that much material and retain it
>for more than 27 seconds.

<<snipped>>
>                                                        Ray Montgomery
>
>
>

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------------------------------

Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 23:43:06 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail] (Paul Derbyshire)
Subject: Re: (fractint) Viewwindows

>I'm using FRACTINT 19.60.  By restart I meant hitting the <delete> not
>literally shutting down and re-launching.  If I don't the images all
>come up as squares versus full screen.

That's still damn weird. So what happens if you try to turn off the
viewwindows using the 'v' screen? Simply no effect? Red buzzing error box?
(What is the message then?) Hang or crash or bombs to DOS? Tried reinstalling
from a clean zip from spanky?


- --
    .*.  Friendship, companionship, love, and having fun are the reasons for
 -()  <  life. All else; sex, money, fame, etc.; are just to get/express these.
    `*'  Send any and all mail with attachments to the hotmail address please.
Paul Derbyshire [e-mail] [e-mail]

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------------------------------

Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 23:52:56 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail] (Paul Derbyshire)
Subject: Re: (fractint) anybody try simplgif?

AFAIK the only way to restore an image in a different video mode is
manually using the video screen after the 'r' and filename choice. IMHO
Fractint 20 needs 2 key features for what you want to do:

1. A disk video matching each and every real video mode, even 320x200x4
   (ugh!);
2. An option that can be set before a restore, meant for batch use:
   fractint ... -novideo=yes ... [restore an image] ... batch=yes
   -savename=foo.gif -savetime=20 ...
   Here the use of -novideo=yes forces all restores to load into a disk
   video mode with colors and resolution matching the parameters of the saved
   image (whether the image was saved from a disk video or normalvideo mode
   with those parameters).

- --
    .*.  Friendship, companionship, love, and having fun are the reasons for
 -()  <  life. All else; sex, money, fame, etc.; are just to get/express these.
    `*'  Send any and all mail with attachments to the hotmail address please.
Paul Derbyshire [e-mail] [e-mail]

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------------------------------

Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 23:00:56 -0600
From: Bob Margolis <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) Text won't print

Wizzle wrote:
>
> Ray....
>
>
> 1. with the page you want to print open in your browser....select
> "file....save as" which will download the page with the html code to your
> own computer....stick it in a folder someplace where you can find it
> 2. open the page you just downloaded in your browser using
> "file.....open".....the page should come up against a nice clean white
> background which will print the text just fine right from your browser.
>

Hi Team Fractals:

Here's how I print out from Web sites. Before doing any printing job,
click on Print Preview to see how the pages will look when they are sent
to your printer. If it looks fine, then go ahead with the printing job.
If not, here's where I differ from Wizzle's suggestion. When clicking on
"save as" don't save as an html page. Rather, save it as (filename).txt.
This method will eliminate all html control codes from your saved file.
You'll be able to read your file easily without getting eyestrain from
trying to read the text among all those control codes.

Happy printing!

Bob Margolis

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------------------------------

Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 23:03:55 -0600
From: Felix <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) A Julia variant ?

Genealogy1 wrote:

> .... Looks best at higher resolutions.

Really?   This is unlike most factals, which are often best at 320x200...   ;o)

- --
| Andrew Duhan    |     Cereal is     |
| [e-mail]  |       g00d.       |
| http://chimera.acs.ttu.edu/~aduhan/ |



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------------------------------

Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 21:12:23 -0800
From: "Jay Hill"<[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) Text won't print

wizzle wrote:

>Many web pages are pretty difficult to print because we web authors like
to
>have dark backgrounds with light print......I'm afraid I'm a prime
culprit.
> However, downloading instructions in a form that will print well is
easy.....


Well that won't have the pictures and if the web page has frames....

As for earlier remarks about sstools.ini, I did not find much in my
logs. A lot of talk about textsafe and some about how to set up timings.
Otherwise, most seem to have their own preferences.  A good look at
the docs can help one with what they prefer. An example is someone
recommended the quiting without asking setting. Well one too many
ESCs and you are out with that setting. Not  me, too likely to loose a
good image that way.

Jay



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------------------------------

Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 23:27:13 -0600
From: Felix <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) Fractint as prototype society

Kragen wrote:

> - what other projects they've seen that worked similarly

    VRML.  The fact that VRML passed ISO, and it's rapidly growing presence
is almost entirely due to the years of discussion on mailing lists and chat
rooms.  (Now if there could only be a "FractalCon" of VRML98 magnitude...)
    Also, athough it was already mentioned, Linux community involvement
never ceases to amaze me.

- --Andrew

- --
| Andrew Duhan    |     Cereal is     |
| [e-mail]  |       g00d.       |
| http://chimera.acs.ttu.edu/~aduhan/ |



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------------------------------

Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 00:31:55 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail] (Paul Derbyshire)
Subject: Re: (fractint) Bug report, I think?...

That's the painterly effect. It happens in Julia sets when orbits start
far apart, get close together and then diverge. In this case orbits of
nearby points started far enough apart (though barely, at e+11
magnification) for non-arbitrary to distinguish them. But they converged
so closely that roundoff errors changed caused rotated square groups of
neighboring orbits to lose their distinctiveness before they later spread
apart again. If you force arbitrary precision the errors will go away.
(Tim? How the heck was that done again?) This also occurs near the
int/float boundary when using ints, for some Julias. (Especially ones, like
yours, that come from in or near minibrots.) In that case the solution is
just to use float=y.


- --
    .*.  Friendship, companionship, love, and having fun are the reasons for
 -()  <  life. All else; sex, money, fame, etc.; are just to get/express these.
    `*'  Send any and all mail with attachments to the hotmail address please.
Paul Derbyshire [e-mail] [e-mail]

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------------------------------

Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 01:14:05 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail] (Paul Derbyshire)
Subject: Re: (fractint) symmetry

The Julia sets of z^n+c have n-fold symmetry. The reason why: The points
are the initial z values. If you have n initial z values equally spaced
about the origin they have the same nth power, by DeMoivre's theorem. (z^n
is r^n * cis (n*theta) where r is the modulus of z and theta the argument.
So the angle from the positive x axis is multiplied by n, the distance
raised to the nth power. Use units of 2*pi/n and consider that n equally
spaced points have angles, in those units, of k+r, with k an integer from
0 to n - 1 depending on the point and r the same for all points. Their nth
powers have the same distance (since the original points did) and the
angles are k*n+r*n. k*n, however, is k*2*pi in radians, and this is just
full turns around the circle and cancel out. That leaves them all at the
same distance and the same angle of r*2*pi radians.)

So these points have the same z^n,and thus the same z^n+c. So they jump to
the same second itrate, and their orbits are the same (and thus also their
fates) thereafter.

For the M-sets the symmetry is trickier. The c value is now the image
coordinate and the z value is initially 0. The iterates look like
((c^n+c)^n+c)^n+c...
Notice though that c^n+c is the second iterate and can be rewritten as
c(c^n-1 + 1). Thus n-1 equally spaced points have the same c^n-1+1.
Multiply that by c and we find the n-1 points don't converge to one, but
they do have equal moduli and n-1 fold symmetry in their angles again.
And so do their successors and so on, because the next iterations raised to
the n-1th power still have the symmetry, and lead to the same (c^n+c)^n-1
+ 1; and this multiplied by the original symmetrical c values leads to
further iterations with the same symmetry and so on.
So they must escape a circular bailout radius at the same time. Also they
must either be in or out of the set all together, not some in, some not,
because of that.

The bilateral symmetry of M-sets is tricky too, but explainable again.
Take two conjugate numbers z and w, of opposite imaginary part and equal
real part. In polar notation these are radius r, and angle +/- theta.
(Negating theta negates the sine but not cosine and so negates the
imaginary part, so conjugates have same real negated imaginaries, and
same modulus but negated angle.)

Take the nth power of these. Samemoduli means same modulifor the nth
power. Also means the angles have multiplied by n. One angle was say t,
the other -t, now they are n*t and -n*t, so again they are conjugates.
Thus two conjugate c have the same c^n-1. Add 1 and they are still
conujugate because 1 is real. Multiply by the original c, and they are
still conjugate. (Check the math: a+ib * c+id = ac - bd +i(ad + bc). a-ib
* c-id = ac - bd - i(ad + bc) so the product of conjugates is the
conjugate of the product.) So again they share the same fate because they
must escape at the same time, or never. Hence the bilateral symmetry.

The bilateral symmetry in Julias of z^n+c with c real arise the same way:
conjugate z's have conjugate z^n's and when c is real, conjugate z^n+c.
When c is not real, this is not true any more and we get the rotational
symmetry alone.

More complex formulas for M-sets tend to have no rotational symmetry
because there's no factoring like above, but bilateral if all coefficients
are real for same reasons. (Add real - conjugates stay conjugate; multiply
conjugates - conjugate products). Similarly more complex Julia formulas
usually have no symmetry, exceptoften bilateral symmetry if they happen to be
given real parameters and the coefficients in the formula are real.





- --
    .*.  Friendship, companionship, love, and having fun are the reasons for
 -()  <  life. All else; sex, money, fame, etc.; are just to get/express these.
    `*'  Send any and all mail with attachments to the hotmail address please.
Paul Derbyshire [e-mail] [e-mail]

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------------------------------

Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 00:05:02 -0800 (PST)
From: "James R. McKenzie" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) Viewwindows

- ---Paul Derbyshire <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> >I'm using FRACTINT 19.60.  By restart I meant hitting the <delete>
not
> >literally shutting down and re-launching.  If I don't the images all
> >come up as squares versus full screen.
>
> That's still damn weird. So what happens if you try to turn off the
> viewwindows using the 'v' screen? Simply no effect? Red buzzing
error box?
> (What is the message then?) Hang or crash or bombs to DOS? Tried
reinstalling
> from a clean zip from spanky?
>

... and the egg on face award goes to...


Yes it works fine now.  I tried the "V" and "F4" things the other
night and nothing happened (Could be Win95 or just own stupidity,
maybe both) now it does work.  I did do an overwrite from a tape
backup from about 2 weeks ago too maybe that did it.  Oh well it's
hard to type with my foot in my mouth so I'll stop now.

                    Thanks for the suggestions anyway.


P.S. : A non - FRACTINT question here.  Will Red Hat Linux 5.0x run in
EDO memory and can/does it support Iomega external tape drives namely
the ditto 2GB?  I'm dying to try it out (see if I can teach myself to
use it from the ground up, literally from scratch) but if it won't run
in the system I've got there's no need in getting it.  Electronics
Boutique has it for $29. Just thought I'd ask.  I have a Western
Digital Caviar 4.0 ATA HDD too.  Basically what do I need to know
first is what I'm asking.  I know this sounds stupid but there are no
Linux/Unix people to ask around here.  Please let me know ASAP.
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com


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------------------------------

Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 03:21:05 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail] (Paul Derbyshire)
Subject: Re: (fractint) Viewwindows

>...there are no Linux/Unix people to ask around here.  Please let me know
>ASAP.

Hi there... how's the weather at Vostok Base in Antarctica? Warmer with El
Nino? Just curious...


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 -()  <  life. All else; sex, money, fame, etc.; are just to get/express these.
    `*'  Send any and all mail with attachments to the hotmail address please.
Paul Derbyshire [e-mail] [e-mail]

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------------------------------

Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 17:51:45 +1300
From: "Morgan L. Owens" <[e-mail]>
Subject: (fractint) documentation and Good machines

At 13:31 08/03/98, Lavondyss wrote:
>
>Yeah, it does help if one reads the manuals. I haven't read all of the
>fractal stuff. Especially about writing your own formula files. Hehehe. I
>don't know how to program. But I assume it's fairly difficult. I'm a chemist
>mind you. Computer related subjects are just my hobby as well as graphics.
>
I agree with this. In fact, some of the questions asked on this mailing
list could have been answered by consulting the documentation. I'd like to
suggest that in future if people have a question on this subject they
should consult the documentation and tutorials first, and only come here if
they're no help or hard to understand. This list would still of course be a
good place for going into more depth than can sensibly be managed in the
docs (resulting in more stuff for the iFAQ!).

I don't want to sound like I'm policing anything here, but I'm sure that it
would be a lot more convenient to questioners to find the answers they're
looking for already sitting on their hard drive.

>Speaking of which, I might be getting a newer, faster computer soon. I'm
>still running at P100Mhz, 2.1G, 64MB RAM. What is everyone else running at?
>I've gotta admit, my computer does run smoother than some new ones. It
>doesn't crash as often and doesn't freeze as often either. I brought the
>Fractint program to work and loaded it onto a p233 or higher and those
>perform slightly better than the one I have now. I thought they would
>perform astoundingly. Is that due to the program or the computer?
>
>
It's quite possibly due to the computer. Many companies (and not just the
knock-off clones) that advertise machines with superluminal processors
don't mention that the motherboard might be nowhere near as fast - with the
result that the processor spends a lot of its time twiddling its contacts
waiting for the rest of the computer to catch up. A friend of my brother's
has a Hewlett Packard P233 and it _crawls_ in comparison to mine; which (to
partly answer your question) is a P166 with 2.1GB/32MB. The motherboard can
generally keep up (Windows permitting).




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Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 09:39:11 -0600
From: "Justin A. Kolodziej" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) Bug report, I think?...

Paul Derbyshire wrote:
 If you force arbitrary precision the errors will go away.
> (Tim? How the heck was that done again?)

You have to run Fractint with the option debug=3200.

BUT BUT BUT  Even with it forced, it still didn't use enough digits due
to the effect you mentioned.  To get this particular one to work, you
have to force the number of digits to about 20 using the "developer"
option bfdigits=20.

Justin K.
- --
Justin A. Kolodziej
I sense a great disturbance in the Source.
I am [e-mail]
Marquette University is http://www.mu.edu

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Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:44:12 -0500
From: "Brian E. Jones" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) documentation and Good machines

>>A friend of my brother's has a Hewlett Packard P233 and it _crawls_ in
comparison to mine<<

Not to mention that the PII's and Pros do nothing for DOS programs.  I took
a copy of Fractint to the local CompUSA and compared the render time of some
pars made on my P166 at 1600x1200, to a 300mhz PII at 1024x768.  My P166 was
just a little slower at a high res than the PII at a lower res.  For all of
those thinking of buying a PII chip to speed up Fractint, go with a MMX
chip.

Brian
- -
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Brian_E_Jones
- -
[e-mail]
- -
[e-mail]



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Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:52:08 -0500 (EST)
From: Ian Kaplan <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) documentation and Good machines

> Not to mention that the PII's and Pros do nothing for DOS programs.  I took
> a copy of Fractint to the local CompUSA and compared the render time of some
> pars made on my P166 at 1600x1200, to a 300mhz PII at 1024x768.  My P166 was
> just a little slower at a high res than the PII at a lower res.  For all of
> those thinking of buying a PII chip to speed up Fractint, go with a MMX
> chip.
>
> Brian

Whoa, nelly! An MMX chip most certainly does not speed up Fractint versus
a non-MMX chip that is otherwise equivalent (although it's vaguely
possible that the cache memory differences between MMX and non-MMX
systems might matter a trifle) nor will it, until we recompile fractint
in a 32-bit win95 compiler on an MMX machine... and possibly not even
then... and while only the gods and Andy Grove know exactly what the
definition of "MMX" is, the PentiumII is basically an MMX chip anyhow.

I would tend to agree with somebody-or-other that a lack of speedups on
high-end chips is more a sign of cheesy system components than anything
else. The gain in floating-point speed between a P166 and a PII-300 is
more marginal than the megahertz-numbers would suggest, but there is a
gain... someone's going to post with clock timings and make me feel silly
for making such a vague, unfounded statement...



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Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 08:17:19 -0800
From: Mark Christenson <[e-mail]>
Subject: (fractint) Re: biased Mandelbrots in Fractint

At 03:00 AM 3/10/98 -0500, Jim Muth wrote (to fractal-art):
>
>FOTD 09-03-98
>...
> (big snip...)
>
>(The following demonstration does not work with the mandel
>formula hard-coded into Fractint, which for some reason calcu-
>lates the square root of the number the user enters as the
>perturbation of the starting point of Z. ...)

I noticed the same thing on Saturday, when I generated one of
my old reliable biased 'brots, something I hadn't previously done in
Fractint.  When I didn't get the image I expected, I started making
guesses at systematic causes, and got it on the second try
(fortunately it was a real-only offset, which made things easier).


Bud


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Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 08:45:48 -0800
From: Mark Christenson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) documentation

>At 13:31 08/03/98, Lavondyss wrote:
>>
>>Yeah, it does help if one reads the manuals.
>> ...

At 05:51 PM 3/9/98 +1300, Morgan L. Owens wrote:
>...
>I'd like to
>suggest that in future if people have a question on this subject they
>should consult the documentation and tutorials first, ...

First, let me say :o) we're among friends here, I'm not flaming.

Of course you're both right.  The documentation is good,
especially for a large, complex program written by a committee
of dozens who were never paid, but were also never imprisoned
for a ten hour corporate meeting to hash out the details.  But it's
not perfect.  The path through "Help" is not always clear.  For my
part, in future I shall endeavor to make a note of these difficulties
and provide feedback to the authors.  We can *all* help to improve
Fractint by documenting problems (real or perceived) with the
program and documentation.

For the present, please forgive those of us with weak taxonomic
skills ;o)


Bud


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Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 11:51:54 -0600
From: Felix <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) [off topic] Viewwindows

James R. McKenzie wrote:

> Will Red Hat Linux 5.0x run in EDO memory

Yes, beautifully.

> and can/does it support Iomega external tape drives namely
> the ditto 2GB?

I am using a ZIP external parallel, for which my kernel came precompiled,
even.  It works fine.On the RedHat List I have seen several people ask
about DITTO, and tape-backup is a staple of the *nix diet, so I bet they
are supported.  Check one of the many "supported-hardware lists" for
confirmation.

> I'm dying to try it out (see if I can teach myself to
> use it from the ground up, literally from scratch) but if it won't run
> in the system I've got there's no need in getting it.

I'm in the process of doing the same.  There are *very* few systems that
can't be improved by running Linux...

> Electronics Boutique has it for $29.

Good price.  Buy two or three.  They make great stocking stuffers.

> Just thought I'd ask.  I have a Western Digital Caviar 4.0 ATA HDD too.
> Basically what do I need to know
> first is what I'm asking.  I know this sounds stupid but there are no
> Linux/Unix people to ask around here.  Please let me know ASAP.
>

Any HD should be fine.
Everything I ever needed to know I learned on the net.
Here are some of my bookmarks for you (and anyone else who's seen the
light... :o)  )

http://www.linux.org/
http://www.redhat.com/
http://www.moongroup.com/unix/linux_stuff.html
http://www.linuxhq.com/
http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/
http://www.xfree86.org/
http://www.xnet.com/~blatura/linapps.shtml
http://www.ssc.com/lj/
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/%21INDEX.html

And the RedHat mailing list can be subscribed by mailing
[e-mail]
with "subscribe" as the Subject.

good luck!

- --Andrew
- --
| Andrew Duhan    |     Cereal is     |
| [e-mail]  |       g00d.       |
| http://chimera.acs.ttu.edu/~aduhan/ |



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Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 11:39:56 -0700
From: Ray Montgomery <[e-mail]>
Subject: (fractint) Browser

 To whomever can help.
                Is "Netscape" a browser?  When I am wandering around looking
for a particular web-site, or home-page, am I browsing?  Or is a "BROWSER" a
different program that must be added to a computer - in other words, a
software option?  Or is it contained in the computer somewhere or somewhere
in Netscape?

Many thanks to those who have helped my previous problems - Wizzle,
Gumbycat, Bob Carr, Kragen, Bob Margolis, Jay Hill and davides.  I am
struggling to master all the advice that was given.  Whether mastered or
not, I am nonetheless deeply appreciative.

The Nerve of this guy!
        Even though I am new to the group I must take issue with those who
say that docs should be read before time is wasted with needless questions
to the list-server group.
        I have down-loaded perhaps 3/4" of material from Noel Giffens
Fractint Home page, have faltered through through most of it, admired the
plethora of really outstanding images in those pages, have infinite respect
for the Stone Soup Group who created Fractint and for all others who have
contributed - BUT - surely you can understand that almost all who are
mightily informed about a subject, and are writing user-manuals and
documentations of just about any sort, do an awful lot of presuming.
PRESUMING!  This group presumes you know this, and that group presumes you
know that, and another group presumes you know at least this much about
something else.
        I've read user manuals of one sort or another, as we all have, I'm
sure, and almost all have been written by experts in their field who presume
you know this, that or the other.  They know it so well, and have known it
for so long that they feel sure you must know "at least this much".  Well, I
could go on and persue this much further, but I anticipate some negative
reponses and I don't mean to.  When I was 'teaching' my grand-children 'all
about' the computer, it was a very short time, indeed, before they were
teaching me.  The increase in computer knowlege due to interaction amongst
kids is practically an exponential growth.  I got left behind is all.
        No I am not whining, nor complaining, nor feeling sorry for myself.
I'm having the greatest time of my life with my new hobby.  I want to learn
and I want to learn more and more but, I can't run over to Jimmy's house and
spend hours with the other computer-kids picking up information.
        I don't feel that any of the criticism was directed at me, I am
merely expressing an observation.  Do you know that on the spec sheet of the
"USER'S MANUAL" for my computer it does not tell you what the MHz of the
computer is?  How's that for documentation?

        Thanks for listening.


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Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:49:40 -0600
From: "Damien M. Jones" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) MMX

Ian,

 - Whoa, nelly! An MMX chip most certainly does not speed up Fractint versus
 - a non-MMX chip that is otherwise equivalent (although it's vaguely
 - possible that the cache memory differences between MMX and non-MMX
 - systems might matter a trifle)

Those differences can amount to something between 3% and 7%, for an
equivalently-clocked processor.  Due entirely to the P-MMX having twice the
cache of a plain Pentium.

 - nor will it, until we recompile fractint in a 32-bit win95 compiler on
 - an MMX machine... and possibly not even then...

MMX offers virtually nothing for fractal generation, and it's been covered
ad nauseam on this list.

 - and while only the gods and Andy Grove know exactly what the definition
 - of "MMX" is, the PentiumII is basically an MMX chip anyhow.

The Pentium-II is basically a Pentium Pro with MMX, a different cache, and
a Slot 1 interface instead of Socket 8.

 - I would tend to agree with somebody-or-other that a lack of speedups on
 - high-end chips is more a sign of cheesy system components than anything
 - else.

Also keep in mind that FractInt directly accesses video memory, which on
PPro and P-II processors defaults to a very slow access for DOS apps.  When
FractInt is moved to an environment where it doesn't have to read and write
from video memory, it will run better on newer processors.  This difference
is most noticeable on fast images.

Damien M. Jones   \\
[e-mail]  \\  http://www.icd.com/tsd/ (temporary sanity designs)
                    \\  http://www.fractalus.com/ (fractals are my hobby)

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End of fractint-digest V1 #128
******************************