Experience the new Bootloader of CE7 VirtualPC BSP - Display Resolution Override
- by Kate Moss' Open Space
The CE 7 (aka. Windows Embedded Compact) provides many new features, a new VirtualPC is one of them and as a replacement of Device Emulator in CE 6.
The bootloader of VPC BSP utilize a new introduced framework in CE7, the BLDR (not the BIOSLOADER!)
It provides many rich and advanced feature, I will introduce more detail in my future posts.
Today, I am going to introduce a basic usage: setting the display resolution.
One of the benefit os using the BLDR is it provides interactive user interface, no DOS enviroment required, so user can change the setting on the console. It is especially useful on VPC: if you are not using Win7, edit a file in VHD could take some effort!
In the Boot menu, you can select [5] Display Settings. There are a couples of sub menu allow you to change resolution, bpp and etc. As it is very straight forward, I won't go through each option except to the Option [3] "Change Viewable Display Region".
The resolution it provides depends on the BIOS (VPC is a PC compatible device), and the minimum resolution it provides is 640x480. But what if user need smaller resolution or any non-standard resolution for whatever reason, it comes the use of "Change Viewable Display Region". User can use it to create a reduced display region. e.g. 240x320 on 640x480 screen.
Also you can alter the platform\virtualpc\src\boot\bldr\config.c to add a non-standard resolution (e.g. 480x272) to displayMode array.
Another solution in case of you don't want to rebuilt and replace bootloader is to alter SaveVGAArgs in platform\common\src\x86\common\io\ioctl.c to overwrite cxDisplayScreen and cyDisplayScreen setting to whatever resolution you want.
