has anyone here had success getting the EDID data block from the BIOS?

when accessing it with vmWare the VESA BIOS function returns not supported.

it is very important to me that my OS GUI have the ability to draw apps that are the same size (physical units rather than pixels) regardless of monitor size. in order to do this I need the physical dimensions of the monitor.

the I2C bus that is shared with the display is hidden behind the video card so the only other wey of getting access to the monitor is to write a display driver for every video card.

Thank you,
Stefan

It is possible VMware does not tunnel this information to you? (Nor would it make sense, since the display is virtualized and can be of arbitrary dimensions depending on how the user chooses to size the viewport window.)