5 ms·

86Box v4.0

114 points by gattilorenz 3y ago

itomato 3y ago
Neat! > Fixed OpenStep text corruption and font sizing issues due to missing FXTRACT FPU instruction
ggambetta 3y ago
Is any of these full PC emulators usable as a library? I've been looking at a few of them lately (DOSBox, Qemu, others) and I have the impression that their UI is tightly coupled with the emulation part :(
- Matl 3y ago
  What about libvirt?
  - bombcar 3y ago
    They may be looking for a real emulator not a virtualization- but to emulate you need to emulate the display …
    - o11c 3y ago
      It probably would be a good idea to refactor all those emulators to be supported by libvirt - it's not like the it requires the guest be the same arch.
    - toast0 3y ago
      I mean, you don't really need to emulate a display. Emulating serial can work enough, depending on exactly what you're looking for. I run my hobby OS mostly on serial (both on hardware and in emulators), because it's easier; but if you're trying to run existing PC software, it's certainly the case that much of it is built to run with display adapters.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        The "vast" majority of these emulators were originally written to run games, and it really shows. My dad uses DOSBox to run an ancient text editor, and we had to figure out just how to disable some of the "game stuff" to make it work for him.
- aninteger 3y ago
  I'd love to see this as well. I think for your purposes you could extend the emulator backed remakes article (which I still reference from time to time) you did a while back.
  - ggambetta 3y ago
    That's exactly what I want to do :) But I want to build tooling around x86 + devices (VGA + sound card mostly) + basic OS, rather than building all that from scratch.
- LeoPanthera 3y ago
  qemu surely is, it's the backend to a ton of virtualization products, Proxmox, UTM, etc.
- muricula 3y ago
  Unicorn is what you want. It was originally forked from QEMU: https://www.unicorn-engine.org/ https://www.unicorn-engine.org/
  - ggambetta 3y ago
    This looks great on a first scan, thank you!
CodeWriter23 3y ago
Does it run Captain Comic though?
jchw 3y ago
I found out I was the maintainer of the Nixpkgs derivation for 86Box when I got pinged to update it for 4.0 last week. Apparently, what happened was, I created and merged a derivation for it while working on something that it would've been useful for, but then got sidetracked and never actually wound up using it for that purpose. Not that that's a bad thing, or anything. 86Box remains a useful tool as well as an entertaining toy and it's certainly nice to see more work being done on it. It did, however, remind me of how chronically bad I am at staying focused on one thing.
snvzz 3y ago
>Added serial port passthrough to real ports and named pipes Finally. Hopefully RFC2217[0] next? This is supported by pySerial, as well as some emulators (like winuae). 0. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2217.html https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2217.html
dang 3y ago
Related. Others? 86Box 4.0 Released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37278672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37278672 - Aug 2023 (2 comments) Try RetroBox (for 86Box) to play with old PC systems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36386175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36386175 - June 2023 (1 comment) 86Box – Low level x86 emulator that runs older operating systems and software - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34144479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34144479 - Dec 2022 (33 comments) 86Box: Why Not Pentium III? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30940639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30940639 - April 2022 (98 comments) The Starter's Guide to PCem and 86Box - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23649244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23649244 - June 2020 (1 comment)
stavros 3y ago
What's the difference between this and something like VirtualBox? Legacy hardware emulation?
- gryson 3y ago
  PCem and 86box are focused on accurate hardware emulation.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Ahh, thank you.

114 points by gattilorenz 3y ago

Neat! > Fixed OpenStep text corruption and font sizing issues due to missing FXTRACT FPU instruction

Is any of these full PC emulators usable as a library? I've been looking at a few of them lately (DOSBox, Qemu, others) and I have the impression that their UI is tightly coupled with the emulation part :(

Matl 3y ago
What about libvirt?
- bombcar 3y ago
  They may be looking for a real emulator not a virtualization- but to emulate you need to emulate the display …
  - o11c 3y ago
    It probably would be a good idea to refactor all those emulators to be supported by libvirt - it's not like the it requires the guest be the same arch.
  - toast0 3y ago
    I mean, you don't really need to emulate a display. Emulating serial can work enough, depending on exactly what you're looking for. I run my hobby OS mostly on serial (both on hardware and in emulators), because it's easier; but if you're trying to run existing PC software, it's certainly the case that much of it is built to run with display adapters.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The "vast" majority of these emulators were originally written to run games, and it really shows. My dad uses DOSBox to run an ancient text editor, and we had to figure out just how to disable some of the "game stuff" to make it work for him.
aninteger 3y ago
I'd love to see this as well. I think for your purposes you could extend the emulator backed remakes article (which I still reference from time to time) you did a while back.
- ggambetta 3y ago
  That's exactly what I want to do :) But I want to build tooling around x86 + devices (VGA + sound card mostly) + basic OS, rather than building all that from scratch.
LeoPanthera 3y ago
qemu surely is, it's the backend to a ton of virtualization products, Proxmox, UTM, etc.
muricula 3y ago
Unicorn is what you want. It was originally forked from QEMU: https://www.unicorn-engine.org/ https://www.unicorn-engine.org/
- ggambetta 3y ago
  This looks great on a first scan, thank you!

CodeWriter23 3y ago

Does it run Captain Comic though?

jchw 3y ago

I found out I was the maintainer of the Nixpkgs derivation for 86Box when I got pinged to update it for 4.0 last week. Apparently, what happened was, I created and merged a derivation for it while working on something that it would've been useful for, but then got sidetracked and never actually wound up using it for that purpose. Not that that's a bad thing, or anything. 86Box remains a useful tool as well as an entertaining toy and it's certainly nice to see more work being done on it. It did, however, remind me of how chronically bad I am at staying focused on one thing.

snvzz 3y ago

>Added serial port passthrough to real ports and named pipes Finally. Hopefully RFC2217[0] next? This is supported by pySerial, as well as some emulators (like winuae). 0. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2217.html https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2217.html

dang 3y ago

Related. Others? 86Box 4.0 Released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37278672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37278672 - Aug 2023 (2 comments) Try RetroBox (for 86Box) to play with old PC systems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36386175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36386175 - June 2023 (1 comment) 86Box – Low level x86 emulator that runs older operating systems and software - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34144479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34144479 - Dec 2022 (33 comments) 86Box: Why Not Pentium III? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30940639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30940639 - April 2022 (98 comments) The Starter's Guide to PCem and 86Box - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23649244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23649244 - June 2020 (1 comment)

stavros 3y ago

What's the difference between this and something like VirtualBox? Legacy hardware emulation?

gryson 3y ago
PCem and 86box are focused on accurate hardware emulation.
- stavros 3y ago
  Ahh, thank you.