I learned about the set in '87 or '88 and wrote a BASIC program to calculate it on my Apple IIe using the "obvious" algorithm.
I left my computer on overnight (I had no idea if it would overheat). However, even after a day, it hadn't even got to the interesting parts of the set- it was still off in the big bands of constant color around the set.
When I got to college I had a PC (a 286 with no floating point hardware) so I ran FRACTINT. It was great, fast, and fun. Eventually PCs got hardware floating point but by that time, few people were really exploring fractals.
Yup: 36 hours on a BBC B+ micro for monochrome mandelbrot. I used to leave it running over the weekend, and tried zooming into various parts of the set over some weeks. I used to photograph the monitor, and I'm now searching for the negatives...
"(Up until 1971, British currency was expressed in pounds, shillings, and pence, with 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound. This makes even addition complicated, as tourists often discovered.)"
Just after I had learned to add and subtract pounds shillings and pence, they went decimal! Ha!
I left my computer on overnight (I had no idea if it would overheat). However, even after a day, it hadn't even got to the interesting parts of the set- it was still off in the big bands of constant color around the set.
When I got to college I had a PC (a 286 with no floating point hardware) so I ran FRACTINT. It was great, fast, and fun. Eventually PCs got hardware floating point but by that time, few people were really exploring fractals.