I’ve finally managed to update the previously released NT video miniport. The reason for the update was indirect, hacking up the video “hardware” access code to support other environments. That led me to separate the generic mode set code from the mode table oriented logic. Since the NT miniport does not need the mode tables, the resulting boxvideo.sys is now about 1 KB smaller without losing any functionality.
As before, the miniport should run on any x86 version of NT from 3.1 up to 7, with the caveat that for NT 3.x, the user has to supply FRAMEBUF.DLL from the NT installation media (see included README file). Also for NT 3.1 only, the installation and mode selection process is different from later versions.
At some previous point, so long ago that I don’t even remember, I expanded the list of supported modes to go up to 5,120×2,880 pixels. This is not extensively tested because I don’t have such a large display, but at first glance it does not appear to be completely broken.
Get the updated driver here. The source code can be viewed here.
Nice to see you’re keeping this updated, thanks Michal. 😀
I seem to recall I suggested 2048×1536 (for true 4:3 aspect joy) and 2560×1600 (for the top-end ultra-widescreens available in 2013) for my benefit, as I ran a lot of IDEs inside VMs at the time, then you added those ultra-high resolutions as a “why the hell not” thing, considering (for example) VirtualBox defaults to 32MB VRAM and can handle it no problem. Mac users with Retina displays probably rejoiced – as they went looking for a magnifying glass. 😀
On NT3.5x WinG works (it’s officially supported).
On NT3.1 WinG is not working (installs, but nothing happens when you run Doggie or another of the demos), even with SP3.
Do you know what’s preventing it? Can your video driver be adapted to support it? Or maybe some files to be copied from NT3.5x (or from WfW3.11 even)?
Did WinG ever work on NT 3.1?
Sure the driver could be adapted… if I had any idea how! There is no explicit WinG support in the miniport driver, which makes me suspect that changing the driver won’t help.
Per the WinG readme it is not supported on NT3.1:
“WinG version 1.0 provides fast DIB-to-screen blts under Windows 3.1,
Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows 95, and Windows NT version 3.5.
WinG will not run on Windows NT version 3.1 or on earlier versions of
Windows.”
I’m trying to see what’s missing in NT3.1 for WinG to work – so, since it’s not a driver issue then I need to look elsewhere.
My suspicion would be something in the GDI driver. Just a guess.