Since thengraphics cards of VMs are, as far as I'm aware generally VESA compatible, unless you specifically decide not to use one in qemu or bochs, you should have a relatively high hitrate by using the 4Fh interrupt to query the VESA info. In the case of Virtualbox/VMWare, you'll definitely find out that way.
On Wed, 26 Oct 2022 at 18:01, Jerome Shidel <jer...@shidel.net> wrote: > > > > > On Oct 26, 2022, at 3:40 AM, Ralf Quint <freedos...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > On 10/24/2022 6:38 PM, Bret Johnson wrote: > >> Anyway, I'm wondering how "involved" FreeDOS should be in the VM world (I > >> think in today's world the vast majority of users install DOS under a VM > >> rather than on real hardware, though I personally do both). How involved > >> in testing/recommending applications (including games) for compatibility > >> should FreeDOS actually be, particularly when a VM is involved? > > To be honest, we should not get involved with ANY VM at all. This will just > > lead us potentially into a deep dark rabbit hole that leads us far away > > from Kansas^H^H^H^H^H^Hthe DOS world. > > The goal of FreeDOS is to be MS-DOS 6.0 compatible, so any VM should be > > able to run MS-DOS 6.0, and so should FreeDOS run as well. > > > > Going by the messages either here in the mailing list or the occasional > > post on the Facebok page, it seems the vast majority of compatibilty issues > > are related to support of specific hardware, mainly sound cards and network > > cards. That is absolutely something that is only to be solved on side of > > that VM. > > > > Another possible issue is that of incompatibilities with some memory > > managers included in FreeDOS. And this is a really tricky part, as there is > > very little active participation of the authors in order to properly > > diagnose and fix any such issues that would arise.. > > > > All in all, I think venturing too far into the support of VMs is a very > > slippery slope for us, with only a few people actually participating.... > > > > > > Ralf > > > > > For VM detection, it is mostly useful for current DOS application development. > > Without going into great details, I have made a couple programs that can do > some (i think) neat visual tricks that require VGA support. One such visual > trick works on nearly all REAL hardware and in DOSBox. However, it does not > work in any other tested VM. Therefore testing for any VM (that is not > DOSBox) and disabling the feature when appropriate is very useful to that > program. > > Also, I have seen where a VM says it supports something, yet it does not. > Under those, sometimes a workaround is needed. > > But like I previously mentioned, I really only worry about the VM platforms > (DosBox, QEMU, VirtualBox and VMware) I think are most common. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
