Change Display Drivers Possible?

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bernarddt
Posts: 91
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2008 1:57 pm
Location: Pretoria, RSA

Change Display Drivers Possible?

Post by bernarddt »

Hi Guys,

I'm hoping that someone that have been able to achieve this, or have experience in trying this, can just give me direction...

I would like to have "widescreen" video resolutions in ReactOS. I'm currently running it in VirtualBox. Is it possible to download and install a 3rd party display driver that can enable widescreen resolutions in ReactOS running in VirtualBox?

Or can this only be achieved by using real hardware and the relevant 3rd party driver for the real hardware display?

Or is this not possible due to VESA compatibility issues.. or something ROS related? (aka "Its a bug and we know it")

Thank you,
Bernard
bernarddt
Posts: 91
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2008 1:57 pm
Location: Pretoria, RSA

Re: Change Display Drivers Possible?

Post by bernarddt »

Just for completeness I just found this thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13728&p=112818&hili ... er#p112818

It explains that some VirtualBox driver can do it, but I don't know where to get it? Do I need to install VirtualBox Guest Additions?
(Unfortunately my ReactOS does not boot if I do install the most recent copy of VBox Guest Additions...)
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Swyter
Posts: 114
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Location: Spain ← Europe ← Planet Earth ← Milky Way ← Universe

Re: Change Display Drivers Possible?

Post by Swyter »

First of all, I have a patch for supporting the VirtualBox Guest Additions' dynamic resolution here. It was merged in the 0.4 RC1, so if you use that version you will have any resolution after installing the tools and rebooting the virtual machine, which is exactly what you want. ReactOS will dynamically adapt to fit inside your VirtualBox window, instantly.

If you compile your own ISOs keeping the functionality of the patch locally for testing is trivial.

--

There's also a way of adding custom VESA modes in VirtualBox (to any virtual machine, permanently) by using the command line, it's a little more involved, but this works best for things like your native full-screen resolution (i.e 1920x1080):
http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.h ... 8647419152

The good thing of the second method is that you don't actually need the Guest Additions installed, works with the baseline display driver used by default (VESA BIOS mode), the resolution will appear in Display options, next to 800x600 and 1024x768.

Replace «ReactOS» with your virtual machine name as it appears in the GUI:

Code: Select all

VBoxManage setextradata "ReactOS" "CustomVideoMode1" "1920x1080x32"
VBoxManage setextradata "ReactOS" "CustomVideoMode2" "1280×720x32"
Those two methods are actually complementary and work very well. Hope that helps!
External patch contributor for ux/user-mode/l10n/winapi. Sometimes I fix a bit of everything everywhere.
bernarddt
Posts: 91
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2008 1:57 pm
Location: Pretoria, RSA

Re: Change Display Drivers Possible?

Post by bernarddt »

Oh you are too kind; A mere copy and paste solution!

So my ReactOS does not want to boot when I install Guest Additions :( and I am testing 0.4 RC1. So I went for option 2.

When I tried the CustomVideoMode2 my VBox gave a error complaining about an invalid custom video mode when I started the VM... but the CustomVideoMode1 worked perfectly, and since that is what I wanted, I'm not going to worry about the why the other option(s) is failing.

Thanks @Swyter
hp38guser
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2006 1:03 am

Re: Change Display Drivers Possible?

Post by hp38guser »

It looks like the second line contains a different x. If you literally copied the text it might be possible that VirtualBox did not understand the special character.
bernarddt
Posts: 91
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2008 1:57 pm
Location: Pretoria, RSA

Re: Change Display Drivers Possible?

Post by bernarddt »

I just checked but when I paste the text into CMD, it seems to be changed to ASCII only. The strange x then looks like a normal x.

I did not test replacing the x though, will do that when I have more time.
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Black_Fox
Posts: 1584
Joined: Fri Feb 15, 2008 9:44 pm
Location: Czechia

Re: Change Display Drivers Possible?

Post by Black_Fox »

It's probably a character for mathematical operations × as in "multiplied by", accompanied by ÷ as in "divided by".
While writing this I have found and linked the character descriptions... It's present on both my Windows and Linux keyboard layout if I press enough keys simultaneously :-)
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