“Bochs is an emulator for the x86 hardware platform. In other words, it can emulate a PC of varying hardware configurations. When you boot into Bochs, it will appear as though you are booting another PC from inside your own PC, and in a way, you are. Bochs emulates the entire PC platform, I/O devices, memory and its own BIOS. What’s even more interesting is that you don’t have to be running PC hardware to run Bochs. It will emulate x86 hardware on any platform on which you compile it. By changing the configuration, it is possible to specify the type of processor (386? 486? 586?), the amount of memory and so on. Bochs is a box inside your box. In fact, Bochs is as many boxes as you want it to be. It even has its own power button.” Read the third part of the emulation articles at LinuxJournal.
Emulate This! with Bochs – Part 3
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I make ports for Bochs since a log time to BeOS, called BeBochs. You can also use it under beos in the latest version.
Regards.
…BeOS that you speak of?
strong in this one…
😎
Bochs is pretty slow. If you have a super fast machine (read: faster than my old Pentium 233MMX, which is normally great for anything but emulation), then maybe you can have some fun with it. If you’re like me, and run a machine that makes you look like an out-of-date lamer (who needs the bleeding edge, if it does what you need??), then maybe Bochs isn’t for you
Just a friendly warning…
Indeed, this work PC I use on the job is fast… 1.5GHz makes the Amiga emulator look nice… I wonder how Bochs would work on this machine…
BTW: Hey Bernd, thanks for the work on BeBochs! I can’t use it on my machine, but it’s cool that you’re helping out the BeOS community
Yeaaa… It s true if you want to use as a production machine. But for me it is important during kernel testing where I don’t have to reboot everytime the kernel got changed.
I fully agree with emey, bochs saves me time by not having to reboot, on every kernel change, and also haves the added function of debugging (not available on real hardware without a hardware debugger).
But on performance, this could be improved, as I’m currently getting 0.5MIPS on my 266MHz P55c, but to be honest, it’s better than nothing…
The Bochs team get my thanks for a job well done…
Chewy509…
Hi,
if you like to, you can download Bochs for BeOS from
http://bezip.de/app/1039/
Ciao,
Sebastian
I am just like you, my hardware is a 233 MMX Pentium with 64 megs of RAM (sometimes, 128 – 64 EDO + 64 DIMM), a 20 gigs HD (I broke the old 1 gig one), and an old and problematic TXPRO II mainboard, with VIA chipsets (phew…). I was thinking, how fast (!?) would be a DOS 6.22 emulated on bochs, just to run some processor-speed based games (does any dino remembers those?) and some other weak software.
I am earning some money to buy a TBird 1400 with some SDR-only mainboard (who needs the bleeding edge? …just an excuse for a poor brazillian boy) and I can badly wait to see bochs running, who knows, even a Windows 95 or a Linux distro like those from 1999/2000. Maybe, I could even play GTA on that, what do you think?
Whoa, I have just written a very very long comment, apologies to the lazy-reader ones. And forgive my poor (if really) english. It is somehow hard to learn alone.
See ya,
Eduardo Linux.
only it’s not really usefull during kernel testing if you want to test modules that are being copiled along side as it will not reflect the response your hardware would give, and so a kernel could apear to work fine in Bochs but keel over when you actually install it.
vmware is good for fast emulating