86Box
Developer(s) | OBattler |
---|---|
Latest version | v2.00 |
Active | Yes |
Platform(s) | Windows |
Emulates | 86/286/386/486/Pentium/Pentium II |
Website | ci.86box.net (CI builds) |
Source code | GitHub |
86Box is an open-source, low-level PC emulator. It focuses on PC hardware from the 80's and 90's. A variety of operating systems can be installed in the emulator, which can then be used to launch programs. It is a fork of PCem. It took over from PCem-X after the latter was deprecated.
Contents
Downloads
Overview
To run any program, an operating system needs to be installed in 86Box first. It has a dynamic recompiler that gives accurate Pentium/II support. It can also emulate numerous 2D and 3D cards.
86Box has now introduced a new GUI on Windows. This GUI is much more reminiscent of something like Virtual PC 2007 or VMware than the PCem UI, so users of those bits of software should feel more at home now.
Image support
Floppy
- IMG (Raw floppy images)
- TD0
- FDI (Both Japanese and stream)
- 86F (Battler's own format, more accurate than IMG, and handles almost any exotic thing you can throw at it.)
Hard disk
- IMG (Raw hard disk images)
- HDI (Japanese format, often used with PC-98 emulators)
- fixed size VHDs (Unofficially, handled as an IMG. Usually works.)
CD-ROM
- ISO
- Mounting a real or virtual CD-ROM drive
OS support
An incomplete list of operating systems that can be installed on it:
- DOS
- Microsoft Windows versions up to Windows XP (including pre-reset Windows Longhorn builds and Windows Vista build 3790.1232)
- Select any IA-32 flavor of NT before Vista, it works.
- OS/2
- Any flavor of Linux that supports the original Pentium
- BeOS
- Minix-PC 1.x, 2.x
- BSD (Only FreeBSD 6.x and OpenBSD i386 tested, NetBSD/i386 has some boot issue.)
- NEXTSTEP 3.1 to 3.3, OPENSTEP 4.0 to 4.2 (including Apple Rhapsody developer releases)
Hardware support
Video cards
- MDA
- Hercules
- Hercules Plus
- Hercules InColor
- Hercules ColorPlus
- CGA
- PCjr
- Tandy
- MDSI Genius
- Sigma Designs Color 400
- Wyse 700
- EGA
- C&T SuperEGA
- VGA
- OAK OTI-037c
- OAK OTI-067
- OAK OTI-077
- Trident TVGA8900D
- Trident TGUI9400CXi
- Trident TGUI9440AGi
- Cirrus GD5428 (ISA) to Alpine family (up to 5480 PCI)
- Tseng ET4000AX (ISA and MCA)
- Tseng ET4000/W32p (Cardex and Diamond Stealth 32)
- Various ATI cards before the Mach 64
- ATI Mach 64 (GX/VT2 variants)
- S3 Vision864 (Phoenix and Paradise Bahamas 64)
- S3 Vision964 (Diamond Stealth 64 VRAM)
- S3 Trio64 (Number Nine, Phoenix and Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM)
- S3 ViRGE (325/DX/VX variants)
- 3dfx Voodoo (original and Voodoo 2)
- Nvidia RIVA 128 (Preliminary)
- Nvidia RIVA TNT (Preliminary)
- Nvidia TNT2 (Vanilla, Pro, and Ultra flavors) (Preliminary)
Sound cards
- PCjr and Tandy
- Game Blaster or Creative Music System
- AdLib
- AdLib Gold
- Sound Blaster 1.0 through AWE32 (Including select MCA models)
- Gravis Ultrasound
- Windows Sound System (ISA and MCA as NCR Business Audio)
- Innovation SSI-2001
- Ensoniq AudioPCI (ES1371)
- Sound Blaster PCI 128
- Standalone ISA MPU-401
- Standalone MCA MPU-IMC (MPU-401 for MCA)
The AWE32 has some features missing due to them not being fully understood.
Network cards
- 3Com 3c503 for ISA
- NE1000 compatible for ISA
- NE2000 compatible for ISA and MCA (latter as a Netware NE/2 compatible)
- Realtek RTL8019AS for ISA PNP.
- Realtek RTL8029AS for PCI
- Western Digital WD8003 series for ISA and MCA.
Network cards can use either WinPcap or SLiRP support on the host system, where WinPcap allows for a full network stack, but requires an installation of the WinPcap software on that system, or SLiRP, which basically implements a simple TCP and UDP packet forwarding system based on PAT. This mode does not require additional software to be installed but is limited to basic TCP and UDP based protocols.
The recently re-designed configuration user interface allows for easy configuration of either mode.
Misc add-in cards
- Adaptec 154xB ISA SCSI adapter
- Adaptec 154xCF ISA SCSI adapter
- Buslogic BT-542B ISA SCSI adapter
- Buslogic BT-958D PCI SCSI adapter
Both disk and CD-ROM device are now supported, and additional development is underway to fully support and implement the BIOS ROMs of these SCSI adapters. Full BIOS support will be needed to be able to boot from these devices.