150 lines
6.3 KiB
HTML
150 lines
6.3 KiB
HTML
<HTML>
|
|
|
|
<HEAD>
|
|
<META NAME="resource-type" CONTENT="document">
|
|
<META NAME="distribution" CONTENT="GLOBAL">
|
|
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Bochs FAQ">
|
|
<META NAME="copyright" CONTENT="Copyright 2001 by MandrakeSoft S.A.">
|
|
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="pc emulation, x86 emulation, emulator">
|
|
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Kevin Lawton">
|
|
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html;CHARSET=iso-8859-1">
|
|
<TITLE>Bochs x86 PC emulation FAQ</TITLE>
|
|
</HEAD>
|
|
|
|
<BODY TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#ececec" LINK="#3333cc" VLINK="#666666">
|
|
|
|
|
|
<CENTER><H1><I>Welcome to the Bochs x86 PC Emulation Software Home Page!</I></H1></CENTER>
|
|
|
|
<CENTER><H1>Bochs FAQ</H1></CENTER>
|
|
<HR>
|
|
|
|
<BR>
|
|
<a name="license"></a>
|
|
<BR><B><FONT COLOR="#000066">Q: Is bochs Open Source?.</FONT></B>
|
|
<BR><b>Yes!</b> Thanks <u>very</u> much to
|
|
<a href="http://www.linux-mandrake.com">MandrakeSoft</a>, producers of
|
|
the much acclaimed Linux-Mandrake distribution. They
|
|
have enabled bochs to be made Open Source, and I have become
|
|
part of their team, working on plex86/bochs. Bochs is now released
|
|
under the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html">GNU LGPL</a>.
|
|
|
|
<BR>
|
|
<BR><B><FONT COLOR="#000066">Q: Who is the author of bochs?</FONT></B>
|
|
<BR>Well, I'm (Kevin Lawton) the primary author
|
|
of bochs. There have been bug fixes, enhancements, and
|
|
code contributions from some few hundred people to date.
|
|
Support has been incredible! And it's growing. Without
|
|
it, I would have quit years ago.
|
|
|
|
<BR>
|
|
<BR><B><FONT COLOR="#000066">Q: How do you pronounce "bochs"?</FONT></B>
|
|
<BR>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.
|
|
|
|
<BR>
|
|
<BR><B><FONT COLOR="#000066">Q: Tell me about peformance when running bochs?</FONT></B>
|
|
<BR><I>Up to now</I>, bochs has exclusively used interpreter
|
|
emulation technology; fetch in an instruction, decode,
|
|
then execute it. I am currently in the process of adding
|
|
dynamic translation, which allows for small x86 code sequences
|
|
to be translated into native CPU code sequences, on-the-fly.
|
|
This native code is cached, so it can be run any number of
|
|
times thereafter. There's an architecture neutral part
|
|
to the dynamic translation, and an architecture specific
|
|
part (back-end). There needs to be a back-end for each
|
|
platform bochs runs on. It's too early for me to comment
|
|
on performance using dynamic translation. But, I have tested
|
|
a few code sample, and I walked away with a smile on my face.
|
|
I'm hoping to release the framework for this in the next
|
|
release or two. It won't have many instructions translated,
|
|
but those will be added incrementally, and quickly, once the
|
|
framework is stable. The first backends will support
|
|
Linux/x86 and BeOS/x86. Probably SPARC after that. It
|
|
would be helpful if I could get a high-end PPC platform
|
|
loaner. Multiple CPU's would be wonderful, but not essential.
|
|
I'll need one for writing a back-end for it.
|
|
Also, I want to add threading to bochs. At some point, I want to
|
|
put certain parts (optionally) in their own thread. Also,
|
|
I believe with very careful lightweight thread communication,
|
|
it may be possible to thread the CPU emulation itself.
|
|
This idea was suggested on the developer's email list.
|
|
<P> So, back to your question. If you need speed, wait for
|
|
dynamic translation. In interpreted mode, I get approximately
|
|
1.5MIPS using bochs on my 400Mhz PII Linux machine. In dynamic
|
|
translation mode, you will see a lag as bochs encounters
|
|
new code, then it'll get snappy and run at a much higher
|
|
rate than in interpreted mode.
|
|
|
|
<BR>
|
|
<BR><B><FONT COLOR="#000066">Q: Does bochs use a disk partition to install the OS?</FONT></B>
|
|
<BR>No. You use a disk image file, which is simply a large
|
|
file, like any other file, on your platform's disk.
|
|
|
|
<BR>
|
|
<BR><B><FONT COLOR="#000066">Q: Why can't I use Bochs with my current Win95 installation?</FONT></B>
|
|
<BR>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.
|
|
|
|
<BR>
|
|
<BR><B><FONT COLOR="#000066">Q: Is there a developer's email list for bochs?</FONT></B>
|
|
<BR>Yes. For instructions on joining, go to
|
|
<A HREF="developers.html">Developers email-list.</A>
|
|
|
|
<BR>
|
|
<BR><B><FONT COLOR="#000066">Q: Is there an irc channel for bochs?</FONT></B>
|
|
<BR>Not that I am aware of.
|
|
|
|
<BR>
|
|
<BR><B><FONT COLOR="#000066">Q: Do you know of any snapshots of Bochs running Win95?</FONT></B>
|
|
<BR>There are some on external project sites. Look at the
|
|
main bochs web page under "What is Bochs" or other topic.
|
|
I don't include any, because I'm trying to keep the web site
|
|
very low bandwidth.
|
|
|
|
<BR>
|
|
<BR><B><FONT COLOR="#000066">Q: Does bochs support a CDROM?</FONT></B>
|
|
<BR>Not yet. However you can use the "mtools" package on quite
|
|
a few platforms, to copy files from your CDROM to a disk image
|
|
file. Make sure to comply with all software copyright issues.
|
|
|
|
<BR>
|
|
<BR><B><FONT COLOR="#000066">Q: Does bochs support a sound device?</FONT></B>
|
|
<BR>Not yet. There are efforts in this area going on by
|
|
contributing authors. The emulation is of a Sound Blaster.
|
|
|
|
<BR>
|
|
<BR><B><FONT COLOR="#000066">Q: Does bochs support a network card?</FONT></B>
|
|
<BR>Not yet. There are also efforts in this area going on by
|
|
contributing authors. The emulation is of an NE2000 NIC,
|
|
and I'm told it's quite far along.
|
|
|
|
<BR>
|
|
<BR><B><FONT COLOR="#000066">Q: What applications are known to run inside of bochs?</FONT></B>
|
|
<BR>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:
|
|
<UL>
|
|
<LI>Access 97</LI>
|
|
<LI>CorelDRAW! 7</LI>
|
|
<LI>Excel 97</LI>
|
|
<LI>Lotus 1-2-3 97</LI>
|
|
<LI>Word 97</LI>
|
|
<LI>PowerPoint 97</LI>
|
|
<LI>Quattro Pro 7</LI>
|
|
<LI>WordPerfect 7</LI>
|
|
</UL>
|
|
|
|
Also, I've compiled an entire OS kernel inside bochs before. Not
|
|
to mention, running DOOM, though at then-pathetic speeds.
|
|
|
|
</BODY>
|
|
</HTML>
|