run vdos with no monitor

[charliemiller]

Hello! I'm trying to run vDos in a windows 10 environment - however, it needs to run without a monitor. vDos otherwise meets all my needs and I've already bought a license - but when I run my program without a monitor, I get an error message: "monitor cannot accommodate this" 

This needs to run automatically, and I can't just click the message away. Any ideas as to what configuration or any scripting I can do to solve this problem? maybe vDos is able to run without a window? 

[Jos]

Well that’s a first!

There’s no provision to run vDos without a monitor.

You best option would be to look for a dummy display plug. So Windows and vDos are tricked a monitor is attached to the PC.

Jos

[charliemiller]

is vDos capable of running without a window - or perhaps hijacking an existing window?

[charliemiller]

This is going in an industrial application - dummy display plug is a good workaround, but if you have time, we'd be willing to contract you out to solve this problem "the right way" and make it worth your time. Alternatively, I read that the source code is available in your readme - however, the hyperlink did not work on the pdf. We'd be willing to acquire that as well to solve this problem. Alternatively, we'd have to shop for another 16bit emulator and we like vDos

[Jos]

Programs running in vDos normally have user interaction, certainly displaying what’s going on.

Besides the required dimensions, columns x character width and lines x character height, hijacking an existing window will surely come with other limitations.

The dummy display plug option doesn’t work?

Jos

[charliemiller]

dummy display - it will work, but adds a point of failure to the system. I'd rather modify the source code to behave gracefully when no monitor is present

[Jos]

I could send you the sources of vDos Base, as mentioned at www.vdos.info/sources.html.

You would mainly have to inspect the use of the global vDosHwnd variable.
Allow it to not initialized and comment out the lines and routines using it.
Also for instance modify the dialog error messages to just log the error before exiting.

Jos

[charliemiller]

For what it's worth - I overcomplicated the crap out of this. After noticing my older devices were having this issue, and my newer devices werent - the difference came down to which graphics driver was installed.

I installed a graphics driver (yes, only the basic mobo driver was on the older devices) and vDos handled it gracefully without a monitor.

So - to be clear - I had misdiagnosed the root cause. vDos works in headless configuration as long as the display driver can assure vDos that there are sufficient resources for its window

[Jos]

Nice.

Jos