12-minute Mandelbrot: fractals on a 50 year old IBM 1401 mainframe
Way back in 1985, a seminal 'Computer Recreations' column in Scientific American featured the Mandelbrot set: <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/blog/File/Dewdney_Mandelbrot.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/blog/File/De...</a><p>(A K Dewdney's columns were always fantastic - a whole new world of wonder for early 'home computer' users!)<p>After careful study, my brother coded it in assembly on a C64. We both had the idea to double the display resolution (from 320x200 to 640x400) by 'extending' the screen into RAM. After leaving the computer running overnight (often longer), we eagerly came the next day to check progress, and dump the output to a dot matrix printer. We couldn't use color or even grayscale, so black and white stripes were the only option to reveal the glories of the Mandelbrot set.<p>Result: stunning, finely detailed, black and white images! I still have the printouts...