[HN Gopher] 86Box: Emulator of x86-Based Machines
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86Box: Emulator of x86-Based Machines
Author : tosh
Score : 82 points
Date : 2024-12-30 06:52 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| chungy wrote:
| See also, the main site: https://86box.net/
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Not to be confused with https://box86.org/
| memsom wrote:
| This is a nice project. I use it to emulate BeOS on an Apple
| Silicon Macbook.
| tromp wrote:
| How does this compare with blink [1] ?
|
| [1] https://github.com/jart/blink
| sandreas wrote:
| 86box seems to be the successor of PCem, a GUI Emulator that is
| capable of emulating full Hardware (incl. Settings and
| BIOS/firmware) via GUI selection. I use it for old games,
| because emulating of 3dfx and similar is also possible in an
| easy way.
|
| Maybe this can be done with blink, but probably not by
| selecting a few dropdowns and clicking some buttons...
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Pcem is still being actively developed, even though Sarah
| Walker said she wasn't working on it anymore.
| snvzz wrote:
| Successor or fork?
|
| I am not sure about the details, but I seem to remember it
| was not a very amicable fork.
| rnd0 wrote:
| It's a fork, going back some years (2017 or so).
|
| It's instructive to look at the activity level of pcem
| (their forum, and their github account:
| https://github.com/sarah-walker-pcem/pcem/commits/dev/)
| versus 86box (
| https://github.com/86Box/86Box/commits/master/ )
|
| 86box has a vibrant community around it (pop in the discord
| some time!) which PCEM really doesn't as far as I'm able to
| tell.
|
| Yes, there is a lot of bad blood -but I would suggest
| taking any stories that you hear (but did not witness
| yourself) with a huge grain of salt.
| sandreas wrote:
| There is also a video about PCEm with a reference to
| 86box from LTT:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWEE2RJj3YI
|
| Found this pretty interesting how to use in practise.
| powerhugs wrote:
| Not at all. Blink according to themselves is:
|
| > blink is a virtual machine that runs x86-64-linux programs on
| different operating systems and hardware architectures.
|
| Where 86Box is, according to themselves:
|
| > 86Box is a low level x86 emulator that runs older operating
| systems and software designed for IBM PC systems and
| compatibles from 1981 through fairly recent system designs
| based on the PCI bus.
| snvzz wrote:
| Blink seems to be closer to qemu-user or box86/box64[0].
|
| 0. https://box86.org/
| forty wrote:
| Is this needed because recent x86-64 processors / hardware are
| not able to run older 32bits binaries anymore?
| xcv123 wrote:
| It runs on other CPU architectures and it emulates older PCs
| which include other hardware besides the CPU.
| forty wrote:
| Ah yes, they have ARM binaries indeed in the download
| section. I got trapped by the "minimum requirements": Intel
| Core 2 or AMD Athlon 64 processor or newer, which made me
| think it only ran on x86
| sedatk wrote:
| Did you mean 16-bit binaries?
| userbinator wrote:
| AFAIK that's a software limitation, not a hardware one (yet).
| NikkiA wrote:
| Intel dropped the "x86s" project to focus on a more
| collaborative approach with amd and others, so it's probably
| been shifted a few years out anyway.
| dfox wrote:
| Technically it is an hardware limitation, amd64 in long mode
| has only vestigal support for memory segmentation (enough to
| implement Win32/ELF i386 TLS ABI and that's it), so you
| cannot reasonably run either 16b protected mode or vm86 tasks
| in 64b OS on that platform.
| userbinator wrote:
| _so you cannot reasonably run either 16b protected mode or
| vm86 tasks in 64b OS on that platform._
|
| I don't know who has been spreading FUD (likely MS, just
| like they did with "32-bit Windows can't use more than 4GB
| of RAM") but that's not true.
|
| https://www.dkia.at/en/node/180
|
| There's another article I can't find at the moment which
| discusses this in a lot of technical detail, making
| references to using the "unrestricted guest" virtualisation
| feature on CPUs that have it (quite new at the time) which
| essentially runs 16-bit code as a VM, or classic
| modeswitching that jumps between 16, 32, and 64-bit mode as
| needed. Nonetheless, it is quite irritating that despite
| the hardware being perfectly capable of 16-bit, 32-bit, and
| 64-bit operation, the designers made it harder than
| necessary to do so.
| memsom wrote:
| Getting any legacy OS to run on modern hardware is very hard.
| For example, in my case, BeOS has no EFI boot capability, has a
| serious RAM restriction, doesn't really like anything past a
| P4, and has no drivers for anything but legacy hardware (like,
| no modern storage drivers - IDE only, no SATA unless there is
| legacy BIOS emulation.) A lot of this is able to be worked
| around with various hacks, but with 86Box, it will run the OS
| as is it was on the actual hardware, so it just makes it a no
| brainer. You can then also use it to emulate old PC hardware on
| other processor architectures - like ARM.
| powerhugs wrote:
| It allows you to emulate MS-DOS or other legacy 16/32-bit
| operating systems on any supported hardware, such as ARM.
| rnd0 wrote:
| Strictly speaking, no. It's primarily developed (as I
| understand it) for cases (gaming, mostly, but some hobby/dev
| use) where emulating hardware accurately (think timings) is
| desireable.
|
| In a sense it's also a history preservation project, though I
| doubt they would characterize it as such themselves. They don't
| do the documentation that pcjs does; but I think it's similar
| in spirit, if not in implementation specifics.
| rnd0 wrote:
| I should clarify that when I say that, I don't mean
| documentation about the emulator (which is coming along
| nicely), but documentation about the computers being
| emulated. I was specifically thinking of things like this (
| https://www.pcjs.org/machines/pcx86/compaq/portable/ ) when I
| was writing that comment.
| trollbridge wrote:
| This is an excellent piece of software - use it almost every day.
| It's the best way to run basically any operating system from the
| pre-USB era. It includes a very good emulation of the IBM PC
| _jr_, a whole host of other ISA, VESA Local Bus, MCA, and PCI
| based machines. It also has CPU modes good enough to run
| troublesome programs that don't function in DOSBox or dosemu2.
| sebazzz wrote:
| I do occasionally run into stability issues, especially with 3D
| games. The emulation is not 100% perfect.
| rougka wrote:
| wow, the screenshots attached to each release on github are
| deeply nostalgic
|
| https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases
| accrual wrote:
| I am a big fan of 86box for my retro PC hobby. Some neat things
| I've used it for:
|
| * Log virtual POST codes to a text file for a physical
| motherboard I'm troubleshooting to see where it's hanging up
|
| * Install an old OS to a .img file which I can then extract and
| pull bit-perfect files from
|
| * Create a virtual hard drive with matching CHS values to a real
| hard drive, install an OS, then write the image to a real disk
| and boot it on real hardware
|
| * And of course, play around with old hardware, software, and
| games in fairly accurate simulated way :)
| ralphc wrote:
| How does it handle serial to TCP connection? I'm using DOSBox
| now, you can configure a serial port to turn into a TCP
| connection.
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