Table of contents (click to expand)

• Introduction
• Problems and solutions
  • NoUniVBE
    • Installation
    • Usage
  • UniVBE 5.3a
    • Installation
    • Usage
    • Still facing issues?

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Introduction

UniVBE (short for Universal VESA BIOS Extensions) is a software driver that allows DOS applications written for the VESA BIOS standard to run on almost any display device made in the 1990's for PCs. The UniVBE driver was written by SciTech Software and is also available in their product called SciTech Display Doctor.

Many video cards in the beginning came with either none, feature-missing or buggy VESA BIOS implementations, UniVBE helped with that by replacing the VESA BIOS code with its own implementation. UniVBE is available as a freestanding TSR or as a linkable library (most of the UniVBE using games come with the linked version).

UniVBE's relevance vanished when video cards' VESA implementations improved over time. DOSBox Staging's VESA implementation is on par with the latest standards so there is nearly no need for UniVBE anymore.

Some UniVBE versions are known for introducing new bugs instead of fixing them... 🤷

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Problems and solutions

Users could experience various issues (ranging from choppy framerate to crash) should the UniVBE driver shipped with the game is either broken, buggy or incompatible with DOSBox Staging.

The recommended solution is to load NoUniVBE during start-up which prevents UniVBE from loading on game start just passing video mode initalization direclty to DOSBox Staging (drawing commands are not used by UniVBE).

Another solution is to load a robust version of UniVBE before running a problematic application or game. This will prevent the UniVBE driver bundled with the program from loading.

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NoUniVBE

Installation

Go to NoUniVBE Releases page and download the latest archive. Unpack the content into your DOS root directory for example C:\NOUNIVBE\.

Usage

Go into directory where you unpacked NoUniVBE and type NOUNIVBE to load NoUniVBE into memory. To unload NoUniVBE from memory type NOUNIVBE again.

Recommended solution is to always load NoUniVBE on DOSBox Staging start-up. The Wiki has a good explanation on how this works. Hereafter a sample [autoexec] section to get you started:

[autoexec]
mount c /home/user/dosbox/
C:
C:\NOUNIVBE\NOUNIVBE.EXE

In this [autoexec] section we mount our C: drive, change to C: drive and load NoUniVBE from C:\NOUNIVBE\.

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UniVBE 5.3a

Installation

The recommended UniVBE version is 5.3a for DOS. Newer versions might break some features (like text mode passthrough). UniVBE is now freeware and can be downloaded at an archive of SciTech's own FTP (including the registration codes). Mirrored also at Vogons Vintage Driver Library.

Once you have the installation package as well as registration codes, unzip files in a directory (for instance to your [C: drive]) and run INSTALL.EXE from the DOS prompt. Follow the instructions and once done run REGISTER.EXE to properly register your version so that it's no longer a trial.

Important note: the registration process will create a file IO.IDX at the root of your DOS C: drive. It includes registration information so you must mount the C: drive first before running the driver.

Usage

The recommended usage is to only load UniVBE 5.3a if the game-supplied UniVBE produces problematic behaviour as described in Problems and solutions.

Users can load UniVBE just by going into directory where it's installed and by typing UNIVBE. Another way is to add the following lines to your [autoexec] section (or create a .BAT batch file):

[autoexec]
C:\SDD\UNIVBE.EXE
MYGAME.EXE
C:\SDD\UNIVBE.EXE -U

Here we load UniVBE from C:\SDD\, run the game and unload UniVBE once the game has ended.

Still facing issues?

Remember that everytime you change the properties of the emulated video card (like the VRAM size controlled by the vmemsize setting of the [dosbox] section) you will have to update the driver. To do so simply run UVCONFIG again from the installation directory.

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