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The second[1] C program I read in my life was Fractint[2]. It is called that way because it calculated fractals with integer math[3]. At that time integer math
by weinzierl 3y ago
The second[1] C program I read in my life was Fractint[2]. It is called that way because it calculated fractals with integer math[3].
At that time integer math was not only faster than floating point, but the only thing available to most of us. Processors like the 80386 did not come with any floating point facilities whatsoever. The FPU was a separate unit (aptly called a coprocessor at the time) which was expensive and hard to obtain where I lived.
[1] The first one was DKBTrace, which lives on as POVRay. Thank you David K. Buck, where ever you are now. I learned a lot from you.
[2] https://fractint.org/ https://fractint.org/
[3] Technically we should call it fixed point I guess, but in the end it was all done with the integer instructions of the CPU. So integer math is not completely wrong.
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- samstave 3y agoWow! I used to use fractint ages ago, and I thought "tint" was for colors...
- IncreasePosts 3y agoI think he's in Ontario, but you can ask him yourself: david at simberon dot com ;)
- gerdesj 3y ago"Processors like the 80386 did not come with any floating point facilities whatsoever." The 80286 needed a 80287 - I bought one to run AutoCAD (1MB RAM!) I can't quite remember the exact order of events but either or both 80386 and 80486 had a co-pro initially. Then Intel re-invented the IBM magic screwdriver. They dropped the 80 prefix and added SX or DX and an i prefix for a laugh. SX had no co-pro or it was disabled and DX was the full fat model. They really started to screw the punter with the 586 ... Pentium. The trend has continued - Core iBollocks.
- weinzierl 3y agoI had an 80386DX (or maybe i386DX, but DX for sure) and it definitely had no FPU. Always wanted one so badly.
- hedora 3y agoI was going to correct you, and say the DX had a coprocessor, but the SX did not. Apparently, that’s incorrect, and the difference is bus width. However, at the end of its life, my 386 motherboard was running one of these at 100MHz, with a coprocessor on the daughterboard in the main CPU socket: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Technologies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Technologies (I think I had an IBM 486, not a Cyrix, fwiw.) Sadly, I’d moved to Linux at that point, and the processor needed a special MSDOS binary to flip into 100MHz mode after boot. Even with the handicap, it booted into X11 + enlightenment at 25MHz (or maybe 33MHz) faster than it could boot into Windows 3.11 at 100MHz.
- johnklos 3y agoPLCC i80387 or compatible can be had from eBay for less than $20, and PGA generally for less than $30 USD.
- sumtechguy 3y agoIf I remember correctly the 486 was just basically, at first, the 386 with the FPU built in. There may have been a couple of new instructions? On that last part I am a bit fuzzy.
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- bongodongobob 3y agoI still have the entire manual that I printed and bound circa 1996. I saw a program on PBS about fractals and we had just got dial up internet. I found fractint and cut my programming teeth with that and a copy of Borland that I convinced my parents to buy for me. Running on a 75MHz Compaq. Being a teenager at that time was just magical. Edit: Just noticed you mentioned Povray too. Are you me? Wow, lol.
- weinzierl 3y agoHaha, I also still have the manual which I printed on my Epson LQ-400 24 needle printer when no one was home because it was so loud and took forever.
- RachelF 3y agoYeah, Fractint was great. The VGA color palette cycling was trippy. In the mid 1980's I typed in a Mandlebrot set program from a magazine. It was for the Apple 2, written in BASIC. It took around 12 hours to generate a 280x192 monochrome Mandlebrot.