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Why can DosBox launch in fullscreen?

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First post, by JohnRook

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I have tried to make my console application into fullscreen but I failed with a pop-up message "This system does not support fullscreen mode" . I know that Vista and Windows 7 do not support fullscreen console. I am using Vista.
Today, I downloaded Dosbox and I successfully turn it to fullscreen. I wonder how Dosbox can run in fullscreen on Vista so that I downloaded the source code and took a look at it, but there are so many files and I don't know which one is it.
My question is, 1st :why Dosbox can run in fullscreen on Vista ?
2nd: what is the source code file that is about the implementation of the software window.

Thank you in advance.

Reply 1 of 7, by Dominus

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Dosbox is NOT a console program. It can run fullscreen the same way countless games run fullscreen on Windows. Dosbox is a native program for your OS (not only Windows, but also other OS as Ubuntu, OS X...).
If you want to know how download the SDL lib sources as this handles that stuff and dosbox only calls that function of SDL when it wants to go fullscreen.
If you want to follow that trail, search for fullscreen in the sources (through windows search or better search programs, not manually), then you will find what SDL function is called, then search the SDL sources for that function etc...l

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Reply 2 of 7, by DosFreak

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Windows Vista/7 do support a full screen console the video drivers\OS do not if you are using WDDM video drivers.

If you switch to Windows XP (XPDM) video drivers you can switch to full screen console all you want.

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Reply 3 of 7, by JohnRook

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Dominus wrote:

Dosbox is NOT a console program. It can run fullscreen the same way countless games run fullscreen on Windows. Dosbox is a native program for your OS (not only Windows, but also other OS as Ubuntu, OS X...).
If you want to know how download the SDL lib sources as this handles that stuff and dosbox only calls that function of SDL when it wants to go fullscreen.
If you want to follow that trail, search for fullscreen in the sources (through windows search or better search programs, not manually), then you will find what SDL function is called, then search the SDL sources for that function etc...l

Thank you for your reply.
I got what you mean. Dosbox is not a console program. Here is my question, how can I build a program like dosbox, with a fullscreen feature and console-like interface?

Reply 6 of 7, by JohnRook

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DosFreak wrote:

Windows Vista/7 do support a full screen console the video drivers\OS do not if you are using WDDM video drivers.

If you switch to Windows XP (XPDM) video drivers you can switch to full screen console all you want.

Thank you for your suggestion.
But I would like to do it as Dosbox does.

Reply 7 of 7, by wd

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But I would like to do it as Dosbox does.

So where's the problem?

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