How can I read the VESA/VideoBIOS "Mode Removal Table"?

Question

Many sites and articles on getting widescreen monitors to work on notebooks in their native resolution mention something called the "Mode Removal Table" in the Video BIOS which specifically prevents certain video modes:

• http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=947830
• http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/showthread.php?t=61326
• http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/313573-xps-m1330-hdmi-hdmi-tv-issue-2.html
• http://forums.entechtaiwan.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=3363.0

Does such a thing really exist? The fix worked for me but I wanted to find out if I can read, modify, or work around this table. However I can't find any mention of it in the various VESA standards. Perhaps it actually goes by some other more cryptic name?

Answer 1

“Many sites and articles”? The first couple of dozen results are from you, and most of the rest are from that Intel article you mentioned or other people linking to that article.

You could always try asking someone who talks as though they know how to do it. There's another thread that discusses it—though it too has no information on the table, only a quick mention of it.

There does not seem to be any currently known way to read the GMA video BIOS. You would have to dump the BIOS and reverse-engineer it to figure out where the table is and how to interpret it. Unfortunately, even extracting it is difficult since nobody seems to have had enough interest in creating a tool to automate it. Looks, like you’ve got even more reversing to do. (Techincally, because the GMA is an integrated graphics-adapter, you'll need to extract the video BIOS from the system BIOS, then extract the table.)