Welcome to the Bochs IA-32 Emulator Project
Bochs is a highly portable open source IA-32 (x86) PC emulator written in
C++, that runs on most popular platforms. It includes emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common I/O
devices, and a custom BIOS.
Currently, Bochs can be compiled to emulate a 386, 486,
Pentium, Pentium Pro or AMD64 CPU, including optional MMX, SSE,
SSE2 and 3DNow instructions.
Bochs is capable of running most Operating Systems inside the emulation including Linux,
Windows® 95, DOS, and Windows® NT 4. Bochs was written by Kevin Lawton and
is currently maintained by this project.
Bochs can be compiled and used in a variety of modes, some which are
still in development. The 'typical' use of bochs is to provide complete x86 PC emulation,
including the x86 processor, hardware devices, and memory. This allows you to run OS's and
software within the emulator on your workstation, much like you have a machine inside of a
machine. For instance, let's say your workstation is a Unix/X11 workstation, but you want to run
Win'95 applications. Bochs will allow you to run Win 95 and associated software on your Unix/X11
workstation, displaying a window on your workstation, simulating a monitor on a PC.
Bochs 2.1 Released on January 12, 2004
Bochs 2.1 was released on January 12. You can download it from the Source
Forge project page.
Bochs IRC Chat Transcripts
The Bochs community held an IRC open discussion chat on Sunday, October 13, 2002.
We talked about the coming 2.0 release. (Transcript). Here are some transcripts of earlier conversations:
April 7, 2002,
June 19, 2001,
May 30, 2001.
Help Wanted We currently need help with the following tasks:
PC
Hardware Gurus:
Mouse, interrupt controller,
timer, IDE controller, network card, keyboard, VGA... Most of our bug
reports and feature requests are due to incomplete C++ models of the
various PC devices. To improve this, we need PC Hardware Gurus who know
where to find the specs for this stuff and improve the hardware models for
Bochs. Working on models is a fun way to learn how things work, and unlike
designing a real hard disk, you can test out your changes on a real operating
system immediately!
Disk Images: Our collection of disk images is getting out of date. It would be great to have small or large images of a variety of free operating systems.
Documentation: Adding installation help and other useful information into the docs.
To help with one of these tasks, please contact Bryce Denney.
June 3, 2001:">Bochs 1.2 is now available in both source and binary form. Read all about this major new release over here.
May 23, 2001: Activity Update - Less than a month after the transfer to Sourceforge, Bochs has reached the top of the SourceForge project activity chart! Thanks to Todd T. Fries for the update.
