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VMDisp9x

Virtual Display driver for Windows 95/98/Me. Supported devices are: - Bochs VBE Extensions (Bochs: VBE, VirtulBox: VboxVGA, QEMU: std-vga) - VMWare SVGA-II (VMWare Workstation/Player, VirtulBox: VMSVGA, QEMU: vmware-svga) - VBox SVGA (VirtulBox: VBoxSVGA)

Supported and tested virtualization software are: - ~~VirtualBox 6.0 (2D, software 3D)~~ - VirtualBox 6.1 (2D, hardware OpenGL 2.1 through DX9/OpenGL) - VirtualBox 7.x (2D, hardware OpenGL 2.1 through DX9/OpenGL or 4.1 through DX11/Vulkan) - VMWare Player 16 (2D, hardware OpenGL 2.1/3.3) - VMWare Workstation 17 (2D, hardware OpenGL 2.1/4.3) - QEMU 7.x, 8.0 (2D, software 3D)

2D driver is very generic and probably works with other Virtualization software as well, 3D part required my Mesa port = https://github.com/JHRobotics/mesa9x. See its documentation for more info.

Easy installation

This repository only contains the display driver, if you want user friendly installation, please use SoftGPU instead (this driver is part of SoftGPU project). There is also small tutorial here.

Origin

Driver is based on Michal Necasek's VirtualBox driver. With my modifications: - added VMWare SVGA and VirtualBox SVGA support - added OpenGL ICD support (simple command that only returns the name of OpenGL implementation library) - most calls converted to 32bit mini-VDD driver (faster and not limited by 64k segmentation) - added access VMWare/VBox SVGA API to support real 3D acceleration from user space driver - added API to access VRAM/FB directly - added DirectDraw support - added DirectX support (in development)

QEMU support (-vga std) is from Philip Kelley driver modification

OpenGL support

OpenGL is supported by OpenGL ICD driver loading (you can use software only driver but also exists HW accelerated implementations). Currently supported ICD drivers are Mesa9x or my qemu-3dfx fork.

DirectDraw support

DirectDraw is supported, Ring-3 driver is in separated project VMHal9x.

Direct3D support

DirectDraw is now in development, most of D3D code is in VMHal9x, rasterization is done by Mesa9x. D3D is not part of releases yet!

Glide support

Glide support has nothing to do with display driver. But when OpenGL is supported is possible to use OpenGlide9X wrapper to translate Glide (2 and 3) calls to OpenGL.

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is supported from version 6.1 (but 5.0 and 6.0 with some limitation works). More on SoftGPU readme.

VMware Workstation and Player

VMware workstation is supported in current version (17.5.x). In theory, this driver can work from version 9.x, but I don't have enough resources to do complete testing of old closed non-free software. More information also on SoftGPU readme.

QEMU

QEMU is supported since v1.2023.0.10. Supported adapters are -vga std which using modified VBE driver (qemumini.drv) and -vga vmware where VMware driver now works but is limited to 32bpp colours only. I plan to support VirGL in future, but currently no 3D acceleration isn't available in vanilla QEMU (but HW acceleration is possible with QEMU-3DFX.

Technical

*.drv = 16bit driver runs in 16-bit protected mode in RING 3 (!) but with access to I/O instructions

*.vxd = 32bit driver runs in 32-bit protected mode in RING 0

*.dll = 32bit user library runs in 32-bit protected mode in RING 3

Adapters

Default *.inf file is supporting these 4 adapters:

[VBox] Default adapter to VirtualBox (VBoxVGA) (until version 6.0 only one adapter) - using 16-bit boxvmini.drv driver. Device identification is PCI\VEN_80EE&DEV_BEEF&SUBSYS_00000000.

[Qemu] QEMUs -vga std (or -device VGA) device - using 16-bit qemumini.drv driver. Device identification is PCI\VEN_1234&DEV_1111.

[VMSvga] VMware adapter, VirtualBox VMSVGA and QEMU -vga vmware. Using 16-bit vmwsmini.drv driver and 32-bit vmwsmini.vxd driver. Device identification is PCI\VEN_15AD&DEV_0405&SUBSYS_040515AD.

[VBoxSvga] VirtualBox VBoxSVGA, using 16-bit vmwsmini.drv driver and 32-bit vmwsmini.vxd driver. Device identification is PCI\VEN_80EE&DEV_BEEF&SUBSYS_040515AD.

Resolutions support

With default *.inf file, maximum resolution is 1920 x 1200. Maximum wired resolution is 5120 x 4096. For compatibility reasons maximum of VRAM is limited to 128 MB (If you set to adapter more, it'll report only first 128 MB).

However, it is possible increase the limit to 256 MB (Windows 9x maximum) by set this registry key: HKLM\Software\VMWSVGA\VRAMLimit to 256. (You can also decrease VRAM size by same way and have more free space is system area.)

QXGA, WQHD, 4K and 5K

Resolutions sets larger than FullHD, are present in inf file, but needs to be enabled if you wish would use them. They're split to 4 individual sections:

  • [VM.QXGA] - QXGA, QWXGA and some others bit larger then FullHD
  • [VM.WQHD] - 1440p resolutions set
  • [VM.UHD] - 4K resolutions set
  • [VM.R5K] - 5K resolutions set

To enable one of them just append section name to AddReg= parameter to corresponding adapter. For example, to add 4K to VMware adapter change:

[VMSvga]
CopyFiles=VMSvga.Copy,Dx.Copy,DX.CopyBackup,Voodoo.Copy
DelReg=VM.DelReg
AddReg=VMSvga.AddReg,VM.AddReg,DX.addReg

to:

[VMSvga]
CopyFiles=VMSvga.Copy,Dx.Copy,DX.CopyBackup,Voodoo.Copy
DelReg=VM.DelReg
AddReg=VMSvga.AddReg,VM.AddReg,DX.addReg,VM.UHD

Custom resolutions

To add custom resolution just append line to [VM.AddReg] section with following format:

HKR,"MODES\{BPP}\{WIDTH},{HEIGHT}"

For example, adding 1366x768 for all colour modes can look like:

HKR,"MODES\8\1366,768"
HKR,"MODES\16\1366,768"
HKR,"MODES\24\1366,768"
HKR,"MODES\32\1366,768"

VRAM size

Due limitation of virtual display card is usually required have enough memory for 2 display buffers, when 1st one is always in 32bpp. So, for 1024x768 16bpp you need about 4.5 MB VRAM (1024 x 768 x 4 + 1024 x 768 x 2). When HW acceleration is used, VRAM is not well utilized - textures and frame buffers must be in system RAM.

Security

In 2D mode any application could read and write guest frame buffer and rest of video ram. If 3D is enabled and works (on hypervisor side) is possible by any application to write virtual GPU FIFO which could leads to read memory of different process (in same guest) or crash the guest. These risks are noted but needs to be mentioned that these old systems haven’t any or has only minimal security management. For example, Microsoft Windows 9x systems haven't file system rights, all process has mapped system memory (in last 1 GB of 32-bit memory space) and any user could run 16-bit application where have access to everything including I/O because of compatibility.

Compilation from source

Install Open Watcom 1.9, then type

wmake

Edit makefile to enable addition logging and you can read original readdev.txt.

Todo

  • Complete recomended mini-VDD function in minivdd.c, stubs here and cites from original MSDN are in comments.
  • ~Complete GPU10 functions (with synchronization with Mesa)~
  • VirGL
  • DDI
  • VESA support

http://www.os2museum.com/wp/windows-9x-video-minidriver-hd/

https://wiki.osdev.org/Bochs_VBE_Extensions

https://wiki.osdev.org/VMWare_SVGA-II

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