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Bochs FAQ



Q: Is bochs Open Source?.
Yes! Bochs is released under the GNU LGPL, much thanks to MandrakeSoft, makers of the Linux-Mandrake distribution.

Q: How do you pronounce "bochs"?
Phonetically the same as the English word "box". It's just a play on the word "box", since techies like to call their machines a "Linux box", "Windows box", ... Bochs emulates a box inside a box.

Q: Who is the author of bochs?
Kevin Lawton is the primary author of bochs. There have been bug fixes, enhancements, and code contributions from some few hundred people, so it is not possible to list them all. Kevin is presently working on a PC virtualization project called plex86 and no longer maintain bochs.

Q: Who maintains bochs now?
With Kevin's help, in April 2001, the members of the bochs-developers mailing list set up a new official bochs site hosted by Source Forge. The current admins on this project are Bryce Denney and Greg Alexander.

Q: Tell me about peformance when running bochs?
Because Bochs emulates every x86 instruction and all the devices in a PC system, it does not reach high emulation speeds. Kevin reported approximately 1.5MIPS using bochs on a 400Mhz PII Linux machine. Users who have an x86 processor and want the highest emulation speeds may want to consider PC virtualization sotware uch as plex86 (free) or vmware (commercial).

Q: Does bochs use a disk partition to install the OS?
No. You use a disk image file, which is simply a large file, like any other file, on your platform's disk.

Q: Why can't I use Bochs with my current Win95 installation?
Think about this. If you had two different PC's, they would require different hardware drivers. So you may not be able to safely move a disk drive with Win95 on it, from one to the other. Bochs is no different. It emulates a certain set of hardware devices, and requires each OS be configured for those devices.

Q: Is there a developer's email list for bochs?
Yes. For instructions on joining, go to Developers email-list.

Q: Is there an irc channel for bochs?
Not that I am aware of.

Q: Do you know of any snapshots of Bochs running Win95?
Yes! Look for "screen shots" on the Bochs home page or on other Bochs sites.

Q: Does bochs support a CDROM?
Yes, a CDROM is supported in Linux, Windows, and OpenBSD. The CDROM drivers for bochs allow the guest operating system to access the host operating system's CDROM data directly.

Q: Does bochs support a sound device?
Yes, there is Sound Blaster emulation support for Windows and Linux.

Q: Does bochs support a network card?
Supposedly yes. There is emulation for an NE2000 NIC in the current releases, though I have not heard whether it works or not. If you try it, please fill out a testing form or bug report.

Q: What applications are known to run inside of bochs?
Well, lot's of different OS's run inside of bochs, so thousands. I'm assuming your asking about Windows programs. To give you a few, the following ones from the Winstone'98 tests worked: Also, I've compiled an entire OS kernel inside bochs before. Not to mention, running DOOM, though at then-pathetic speeds.