virtualbox.org

I am asking this question, because during installation of Warp v4.5 I do observe periods where the screen image ist toatally scrambled. This happens while still in 640x480 resolution.

It seems that the 16-colors mode (which I suppose uses INT10 calls) works ok, but most probably the mode with 256 color palette is causing the distorted screen image.

Is there a table available, listing all supported VESA modes?

Best reghards,
Ingo

See this picture:
http://pinus.tt.ltu.se/~baf/modes.png
Disregard the last four 360-363 they are my custom modes.

Hi baf,

many thanks! (how did you generate that list?)

This clearly shows, where the problem comes from: the 640x480 modes which VBox supplies, are not the standard VESA modes I need. What I need is:

640x480 256 color pallette = VESA mode 257 (0x0101)

and probably one of the higher color modes (but I am not sure)
640x480 x 15bit = VESA mode 272 (0x0110)
640x480 x 16bit = VESA mode 273 (0x0111)

Unless these are implemented, I am unable to go through the graphic installation steps with OS/2.

With best regards,
Ingo

Generated by booting a linux and at the kernel line adding
vga=ask
Then press enter and voila.
Unfortunately it's only a picture not text that I can copy. Thats why it's a screenshot.

Thanks a lot - that way I learned another thing Tux can do

Now the I can only hope hope that the VBox-crew will add the 'missing' VESA mode.
Ingo

When you boot with GRUB, you can use this table for resolution reference. VB supports all of them, as it simply shows what the Guest OS tells it to show.
If you search for grub vga on google, you will get other sites with a similar table.

Sasquatch wrote:.....VB supports all of them, as it simply shows what the Guest OS tells it to show.

Hi Sasquatch,

you probably got the background of my question wrong. My guess ist that the VESA mode
640x480, 256 color pallette = VESA mode 257 (0x0101) does not display correctly - I get a distorted screen. I will attach a screen shot later, because I have to boot another system.
This happens not only to me, there are other posts dealing with the distorted display when installing OS/2 in VBox 2.1.x.

Here the screenshot:
http://i37.tinypic.com/2en0nl2.jpg
The mode above = 257 is the mode as defined by the VESA organisation and describes a 256 color palette. I do know that other operating systems use a different enumeration, but I do not know how to describe my problems besides verbal.

With best regards,
Ingo

Well, I tried that 640x480x8 on my Ubuntu Guest, doesn't give any problems in CLI mode. Probably, as you already stated, OS specific.

Do you have any location where I can upload my screen shot?

I was expecting to perform that by selecting the "Img" button from the tags, but that doesn't work

Best regards,
Ingo

P.S.: what I else found on digging for explanation:
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedi ... Extensions
and
www.vesa.org/public/VBE/vbe3.pdf
especially this partial comment taken out of it:

"VBE is expected to work on all 80x86 platforms, in real and protected modes. Starting with VBE
3.0, all the VBE/Core BIOS functions can be ‘dual-mode’, allowing them to optionally be called
as 16-bit protected mode code via a direct call to a new protected mode interface entry point.
‘Dual-mode’ code means that the BIOS code adheres to certain restrictions when called via the
protected mode entry point, to ensure full compatibility with fully protected mode operating
systems such as Windows NT, OS/2 and the many versions of UNIX. Note that although the
‘dual-mode’ code must be called as 16-bit protected mode code, this does not preclude it from
being called by 32-bit pure operating systems such as Windows NT and OS/2.
"

Observation:
once I have the Scitech SNAP driver installed all modes are available without any problem.
The problem is to get such far . The distortion appears to happen when still BIOS calls are used/required?

You can post images to hosting sites like http://imageshack.us and http://tinypic.com and paste the image between img tags here.

Thanks for info!

I have added the screen shot to the corresponding posting up this thread.
Here I paste another screenshot which demonstrates that Wapr underneath is working (almost) correctly, if you know where to klick with the mouse

http://i44.tinypic.com/ru8xv4.jpg

It appears that just activated windows(pop-ups are painted correctly while the rest and backgruond of the desktop are not refreshed correctly an distorted instead.

If you are interested to reproduce the problems, I can offer to supply a link to the CD-image I use to install. This CD is bootable, based on OS/2-Warp with all fixes and updates IBM has released until they finally stopped support for OS/2. (this means it is by far newer than MCP2). The updated CD was built using Zsolt's UpdCD. It does not contain any additons/modification made later by Serenity to asemble EcomStation.

The bz2-compressed image is some 360MB in size.

With best regards,
Ingo

I get that exact same distortion when I run OS/2 Warp 4. Or Warp 3. Or 2.1.

As others have the same issue, with other versions of OS/Warp too, open a bug ticket in the Bugtracker. You need to sign up for a new account there, your forum account won't work there though.

> open a bug ticket in the Bugtracker

Done!

You can find my report here: http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/3273

Thanks, Ingo

The display problem is solved with VBox 2.2 - thanks for that!

Ingo