NT video miniport UHD

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.

VirtualBox NT video miniport driver, now at version 1.6

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.

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One Response to NT video miniport UHD

  1. Richard Cranium says:

    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. 😀

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