[HN Gopher] Faux86: A portable, open-source 8086 emulator for ba...
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Faux86: A portable, open-source 8086 emulator for bare metal
Raspberry Pi (2019)
Author : wicket
Score : 79 points
Date : 2021-02-07 19:32 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| tpmx wrote:
| Judging from the Github issues it seems like it's very slow,
| doesn't run on RPi 4 and hasn't really gotten any attention for
| 16 months.
|
| It's an interesting idea though; running a bare metal x86
| emulator on e.g. a Raspberry Pi 400.
| tyingq wrote:
| The slowness issue is interesting, as the codebase it's forked
| from mentions it runs fairly well:
|
| _" Even an old 400 MHz PowerPC G3 iMac running Linux is
| capable of more than 2 million instructions/sec"_
|
| That would be 12x as many MIPS as the original 8086, on a
| relatively old CPU.
| forbes wrote:
| This is demonstrated in the second half of this video (around the
| 11:30 mark):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh4LhcbSmXQ&t=619s
|
| This seems good enough for emulating early 8088 and maybe even
| 80286 PCs, so opens up a big catalog of early games.
| tpmx wrote:
| Nice! Nothing like video. So it's able to emulate an 8-10 MHz
| 8086 PC.
|
| > so opens up a big catalog of early games
|
| That all depends on how well it emulates the various subsystems
| in the PC and the video/sound/etc extension cards.
|
| It's based on this 2012 relase of:
| http://fake86.rubbermallet.org/ - it seems to have a starter
| level quality, sort of.
| [deleted]
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Why is this interesting?
|
| I ask with genuine curiosity. I don't understand enough about
| computer architectures. Is it that you can run stuff compiled for
| 8086 on RPi?
| tpmx wrote:
| Nostalgia. 80s PCs are quite expensive now. One very annoying
| thing with emulation running on a host os like Linux is that
| the boot phase typically takes a lot of time.
|
| Another nice approach would be a boot speed-optimized buildroot
| image running PCem, along with some TV-like GUI for
| configuration. https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/
|
| I think this PC emulator needs more attention. Its strategy of
| emulating the speed of a very slow CPU hits a good middle
| ground - you don't need cycle accurate emulators when emulating
| 80s/90s PCs, because they were all a bit different, but unlike
| DOSBox, there's an attempt to get the basics right given a
| specific target CPU.
| anticensor wrote:
| This indeed enables us to run DOS on Raspberry Pi:
| https://xkcd.com/1508/
| HeWhoLurksLate wrote:
| Woah, I didn't remember that XKCD called iOS and OSX combining.
| dialamac wrote:
| Have they really though? iOS has always shared the same
| underpinnings as OSX. Although much hyped with Big Sur, iOS
| features have dribbled into OSX since at least Lion (more
| than 10 years ago). They're still distinct operating systems
| (thankfully IMO) and rather than unify, iPadOS is a distinct
| entity.
| sneak wrote:
| Well, he also called TinderOS, another thing that didn't
| happen.
| deaddodo wrote:
| People have been calling this since they acquired PA Semi, 11
| or 12 years.
| Gys wrote:
| I came across box86 yesterday during FOSDEM. It have not yet
| tried it, but is similar and actively maintained:
| https://github.com/ptitSeb/box86
| rock_artist wrote:
| It's seems to be very different.
|
| box86 is user-space. Faux86 is bare metal. (minimum overhead
| iiuc).
|
| box86 is fully x86 ISA compliant and OpenGL. Faux86 seems now
| as 8086/80186.
| app4soft wrote:
| What about porting _box86_ to _Symbian 9.x (S60v3 /S60v5)_?
|
| Is it possible?
| retrac wrote:
| Not really, I would think. You'd lose most of the
| advantage. Box86's trick is to intercept x86 system and
| library calls, and invoke the native ARM equivalent.
|
| Symbian, as a different underlying operating system, has no
| native ARM equivalents of the various x86 Linux system
| calls and common libraries. So you'd have to emulate those
| somehow, perhaps by translating them into Symbian-
| appropriate calls.
|
| Speaking more generally, a JIT translator would otherwise
| be relatively easy to port as a straight C or C++ library.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Does the Pi still have a composite video output? Some interesting
| things can be done with a precise CGA emulation on NTSC output.
| [deleted]
| tyingq wrote:
| The Rpi4 does still have composite out, but it's routed via the
| 4-pole audio jack. You'll want a 3.5mm 4 pole to 3 RCA cable.
| terramex wrote:
| RPi 4 and Compute Module 4 still have one (albeit disabled by
| default, one line in config.txt needs to be added to re-enable
| it).
|
| Standalone RPi 400 (the one inside a keyboard) does not have
| any analog outputs.
| tomcam wrote:
| Calling Fabrice Bellard!
| jzer0cool wrote:
| I still have an old 3.5 drive. Curious if such a drive could be
| connected to the pi and work with your 8086 emulator?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| IDE-USB adaptors exist, but on bare metal (like this) drivers
| might be a problem. I expect it would work if you're running an
| emulator on top of something with the drivers (ex. Linux).
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(page generated 2021-02-07 23:00 UTC)