Set VMware to always be 4:3 aspect ratio.

[KurtLang]

I'm using VMware to run MS-DOS 6.22 in macOS, Big Sur. It always starts by matching the aspect ration of the monitor. Depending on which old DOS app I'm running, it will sometimes set itself to 4:3, and other times not, which causes the app to be stretched in the width.

Since there was no such thing as wide screen in that era, I want VMware to always be 4:3. I did find this page:

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/81657

However, it's incredibly vague. Such as step 1. I can find multiple .vmx files on the drive. Which one is the author referring to? Step 2 is self explanatory if I knew which .vmx file they mean.

Step 3. Save the .vmx file and then open it in VMware Fusion. Huh? Why would you open a preference/settings file in the main app? The screen height and width lines you add is easily understood, but again - where? In which .vmx file?

It says, To do so, add two additional lines to the .vmx file (as above). "As above" can simply mean do the same type of editing. But it's not clear at all if they mean the same .vmx file you edit in steps 1 and 2, or a different one.

Thanks.

[KurtLang]

Okay, after more searching I found what the author was talking about. But if I enter the lines:

appleGPU0.present = "TRUE"
svga.present = "FALSE"

Then the VM launches with a blank, light gray background and does nothing. If I take those two lines out and add these:

appleGPU0.screenWidth = "1280"
appleGPU0.screenHeight = "960"

It ignores those values.

[continuum]

> I can find multiple .vmx files on the drive. Which one is the author referring to? 
There is only one vmx-file for each VM. Basically you could say that each vmx-file IS a VM.
So of course you only edit that vmx-file that "represents" the VM you want to modify.

> Why would you open a preference/settings file in the main app? 
You do NOT open preference or settings file - you just doubleclick the vmx-file.

Note: editing vmx-files must be done while the vm is powered off and not opened in Fusion.
If in doubt - just show us your VM / vmx-file

Ulli

[continuum]

You should have:

appleGPU0.present = "TRUE"
svga.present = "FALSE"

appleGPU0.screenWidth = "1280"
appleGPU0.screenHeight = "960"

Additionally make sure that you do NOT have:
appleGPU0.present = "false"
svga.present = "true"

Ulli

[wila]

Hi,

Wrong knowledge base article...

The article you reference and the settings that you are applying are:

- extremely beta, using non released settings (Fusion 12, on Big Sur hosts)
- for macOS Big Sur guests (you're using MS DOS)
- for enabling 3D acceleration (again you're using DOS, it does not even exist for DOS)

So.. let's step back a bit.

First roll back the edits you made, they will NOT work for what you are after and most likely will make things worse and probably also unstable.

What you want is to use 4:3 screen aspect ratio's and no stretching.

You should not have to edit the vmx file manually for this.

Under settings -> Display, you find the following:

If you're talking full screen then you can choose from this list:

From the sounds of it, it now behaves like "Stretch" and what you want is "Center" or possibly "resize".

Try those... (If you want this in Windowed then you only have resize)

Good luck!
--
Wil

[KurtLang]

Thanks, but I've done all of that. Doesn't work.

[KurtLang]

Hello Wil,

I kind of figured that wasn't the correct article as it refers to enabling 3D acceleration more than anything else, but it was the only one I could find that also mentioned setting the aspect ration.

VM settings set back to original (edits removed). No matter where I put the display drop down choices - and I tried every possible combination - the VM insists on displaying at the same aspect ration as the monitor. It is very briefly 4:3 when the VM first launches DOS, but then immediately changes to 16:9.

I also found this little preference pane that looked promising:

https://github.com/MarLoe/VMware.PreferencePane

But it doesn't work. Complains the file vmware-resolutionSet is missing. Which makes sense since there is no VMware Tools subfolder without installing the tools add on. Something I'm somewhat trying to avoid as settings an aspect ratio shouldn't be this complicated.

[wila]

Hi,

I will try later today. That pane won't work as vmware-ResolutionSet is part of VMware Tools.
There is no vmware Tools for DOS. There might be some other alternatives though.

Is this full screen or in a window?

--
Wil

[KurtLang]

Hi Wil,

Windowed. Also tried full screen, does the same thing.

I did just now install VMware Tools from VMware's download page. Tried the prefpane again and it "works" in the sense that it tells you it has set your chosen resolution, but the display remains at 16:9.

Thanks for your attempts!

[wila]

Hi,

---

@KurtLang wrote:

I did just now install VMware Tools from VMware's download page. Tried the prefpane again and it "works" in the sense that it tells you it has set your chosen resolution, but the display remains at 16:9.

I'm confused...
You said that you are running MS DOS 6.22 in a VM.

AFAIK there is no VMware Tools for MS DOS.
What VMware Tools are you installing?
Is this in another VM?
Are you perhaps installing VMware Tools in the host OS? (VMware Tools is guest OS only as is the prefpane utility that you are talking about, it is to be installed in a macOS guest...)

--
Wil

[wila]

Hi,

---

@wila wrote:

I will try later today.

---

Well I tried a bunch of things, but nothing seems to work to make it look like 4:3 instead of 16:9

Stretch and resize always keep the aspect ratio, no matter what vmx setting I try.

Will see if I can find something else, but can't make any promises I will find something.

One thing that I noticed though is that DOS performs much better on virtual hardware 6 than on virtual hardware 18. ( I tried all my settings on vHW18 before I went back to vHW set to 6 )

--
Wil

[KurtLang]

I don't see a button for block quotes, so I'll highlight your comments with bold and italic.

AFAIK there is no VMware Tools for MS DOS. What VMware Tools are you installing? Is this in another VM?

I'm using the VM Tools from VMware's download page. Pulled the latest one, which is 11.2.5.

https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/downloads/details?downloadGroup=VMTOOLS1125&productId=742

No idea if the tools are only meant for a GUI OS such as Windows or macOS. It does clearly say OS X, 10.11 or later, but the only way to find out if it would have any effect at all on DOS was to try it. Mostly, it was to get the prefpane I found to "work". But DOS pays no attention to any resolution you choose. Which makes sense given the OS in use.

Well I tried a bunch of things, but nothing seems to work to make it look like 4:3 instead of 16:9 Stretch and resize always keep the aspect ratio, no matter what vmx setting I try.

Yup, same thing here.

I did try using virtual hardware 6, but there was no noticeable difference in the performance of DOS 6. Other than it made the mouse move uncontrollably fast. Put it back to 18.

I'm getting the feeling a fixed 4:3 isn't possible. The VM seems to decide when you run an app (I'm using it to run ancient games) whether or not to change the display to 4:3. Some it does, others not.

[wila]

Hi,

---

@KurtLang wrote:

I don't see a button for block quotes, so I'll highlight your comments with bold and italic.

---

The block quote button exists, but it doesn't always show up. In this case I had to hit cancel 2x after clicking reply for it to show up... frankly our new forum software is shit. (and as a moderator I think I'm qualified to say that)

---

@KurtLang wrote:

I'm using the VM Tools from VMware's download page. Pulled the latest one, which is 11.2.5.

https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/downloads/details?downloadGroup=VMTOOLS1125&productId=742

I figured that's what you did, just asked to make sure.

VMware Tools is not to be installed at the host OS, you should not install it in your macOS, it won't help you with anything and it can only cause you trouble. VMware Tools is installed in the guest OS that runs in the virtual machine. In your example that would be MS DOS. But there is no official VMware Tools for MS DOS.

This page is not a bad explanation:
https://masteringvmware.com/what-is-vmware-tools/

(at least it is more readable than VMware Tools own documentation which is mostly written for people who know what it is)

One of the problems with DOS in a VM is that the CPU core that you assign runs constantly at 100%, there's a program called DosIdle that can help you with that. A copy of that app is at my site here:
https://www.vi-toolkit.com/wiki/index.php?title=DOS

Actually this page is better:
http://www.scampers.org/steve/vmware/ (I remember to have used it in the past myself as well, along with Ken Kato's site which is also referenced down there)

---

@KurtLang wrote:

I did try using virtual hardware 6, but there was no noticeable difference in the performance of DOS 6. Other than it made the mouse move uncontrollably fast. Put it back to 18.

I'm getting the feeling a fixed 4:3 isn't possible. The VM seems to decide when you run an app (I'm using it to run ancient games) whether or not to change the display to 4:3. Some it does, others not.

---

My main issue with vHW18 was that it took ages for the Himem device driver to load. It's probably fine after that.

You might be right about it not being able to fix the aspect ratio, but I'm not completely giving up hope on that yet. On other guest OS's this kind of functionality is offered via VMware Tools (aka via drivers installed in the guest to help with the screen resizing)

--
Wil

[KurtLang]

Hello Wil,

Part of my goal here is to stop using DOSBox. Since it only emulates DOS, it doesn't always do well. Some apps won't run, and others freeze or glitch. Best solution of course is to run an official copy of MS-DOS.

I did remove VMware Tools and restored a backup of the DOS VM so all settings would be back to normal.

I figured out what's going on with the dimensions. VMware isn't correctly setting each old app/game to 4:3 (640 x 480), but instead to 640 x 400. For once, I watched more closely to how the VM's window size changes, and on some, only the width changes, resulting in 640 x 400 instead of squaring off to an actual 4:3, 640 x 480 display.

As you're aware, it opens with an aspect ratio similar to this. 

Most apps give me 640 x 480, such as this old card game:

But some insist at displaying 640 x 400, which gives them a stretched appearance.

It should look like the following, as in DOSBox:

At least I finally get why some apps looked stretched, though I still don't see a way to always get 4:3 every time.

[wila]

Hi,

Yes I understand the aspect ratio issue, am a bit surprised by your 640x400 and 640x480 findings though.

Also know DosBox (and its derivatives such as vDos), besides that I take it that you also know the initiative from web.archive.org : https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games

Note that I added some more notes at the vi-toolkit web page for DOS users.

--
Wil

[wila]

Hmmm your reply suggests that it can be controlled in guest by setting the graphics mode.
Perhaps one of the utilities here helps: http://www.reimagery.com/fsfd/screen.htm#screenmode
--
Wil

[wila]

Hi,

OK, I thought I was going nuts, because I knew I had seen resizes without fixed aspect ratios for DOS. Seems my mind hasn't left me yet.

Turns out that you can do what you are after in VMware Workstation Professional:

To give you an idea:

As you can see from the screenshot, it's a "Free Stretch" option in the toolbar.
So we know it can be done, but we don't have this option in VMware Fusion, nor am I aware of a way to expose this functionality.
Note also that it appears that this is not an option in the .vmx as you can only use it when the VM is running.

You're on macOS, so it isn't really an option for you, but the side note here is that this version of VMware Workstation is actually running within a Windows 10 virtual machine on top of VMware Fusion.

So that's a DOS VM within a Windows 10 VM within macOS.
I use nested virtualization (as this is called) all the time for testing my software.

--
Wil

[KurtLang]

First, thank you for your initiative for trying so many different possibilities. I did try the DOS utilities you mentioned, and a couple more I found. They do work to change the aspect ratio of the DOS command line screen, but when I launch any problem child app, such as Sierra's Hoyle card games, it immediately goes back to 640x400.

I suppose I also shouldn't be surprised with the free, one guest OS version of VMware that my controls would be limited.

I'll just have to live with the way some old apps display for now. The ones I'm running in DOS are all old titles I bought, and still have the boxes for. The only exception is long ago, I copied the contents of the original 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppies to a hard drive so I could get at them in the future.

And thanks for the DOS library link. I presume these are all games that have fallen to abandonware?