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86Box is an
IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...
emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...
for
Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
,
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
and
Mac Mac or MAC may refer to: Common meanings * Mac (computer), a line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. * Mackintosh, a raincoat made of rubberized cloth * Mac, a prefix to surnames derived from Gaelic languages * McIntosh (apple), a Canadi ...
based on PCem that specializes in running old
operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
and
software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...
that are designed for
IBM PC compatibles An IBM PC compatible is any personal computer that is hardware- and software-compatible with the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) and its subsequent models. Like the original IBM PC, an IBM PC–compatible computer uses an x86-based central pro ...
. Originally forked from PCem, it later added support for other IBM PC compatible computers as well.


Features


Hardware

The main goal of 86Box is to emulate various IBM PC compatible systems/
motherboards A motherboard, also called a mainboard, a system board, a logic board, and informally a mobo (see "Nomenclature" section), is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It holds and allow ...
from 1981 until 1999, which includes almost all IBM PC models (including the IBM PS/1 model 2121 and the IBM PS/2 model 2011) and supports IBM PC compatible systems/motherboards. 86Box is capable of emulating
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...
processors (and its respective clones, including
AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...
, IDT and
Cyrix Cyrix Corporation was a microprocessor developer that was founded in 1988 in Richardson, Texas, as a specialist supplier of floating point units for 286 and 386 microprocessors. The company was founded by Tom Brightman and Jerry Rogers. Ter ...
) from
Intel 8088 The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers ...
through the Pentium ''Tillamook'' MMX/Mobile MMX processors and
Pentium Pro The Pentium Pro is a sixth-generation x86 microprocessor developed and manufactured by Intel and introduced on November 1, 1995. It implements the P6 (microarchitecture), P6 microarchitecture (sometimes termed i686), and was the first x86 Intel C ...
/
Pentium II The Pentium II is a brand of sixth-generation Intel x86 microprocessors based on the P6 (microarchitecture), P6 microarchitecture, introduced on May 7, 1997. It combined the ''P6'' microarchitecture seen on the Pentium Pro with the MMX (instruc ...
processors from 1997 until 1999. A recompiler is mandatory for P5 Pentium and Cyrix processors and optional for i486 processors and IDT WinChip processors. 86Box can emulate different graphic modes, this includes
text mode Text mode is a computer display mode in which content is internally represented on a computer screen in terms of characters rather than individual pixels. Typically, the screen consists of a uniform rectangular grid of ''character cells'', ea ...
,
Hercules Hercules (, ) is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures. The Romans adapted the Gr ...
, CGA (including some composite modes and the 160 × 100 × 16 tweaked modes),
Tandy Tandy may refer to: Companies * Tandy Corporation (1919–2000), a leather supply company which became the RadioShack Corporation in 2000 ** Hinckley-Tandy Leather Company, name used from 1919 to 1956 ** TRS-80 Color Computer, rebranded as Tandy C ...
, EGA,
VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the IBM PC compatible industry within three years. T ...
(including Mode X and other tweaks),
VESA VESA (), formally known as Video Electronics Standards Association, is an American standards organization, technical standards organization for computer display standards. The organization was incorporated in California in July 1989To retrieve ...
, as well as various video APIs such as DirectX and 3Dfx's Glide. 86Box can also emulate various video cards such as the ATI Mach64 GX and the S3 Trio32/64/Virge series.
Voodoo Voodoo may refer to: Religions * West African Vodún, a religion practiced by Gbe-speaking ethnic groups * African diaspora religions, a list of related religions sometimes called Vodou/Voodoo ** Candomblé Jejé, also known as Brazilian Vodu ...
cards are also emulated with support for Voodoo 1/2/3 and various optimizations. A separate recompiler has been added for Voodoo emulation, making it faster to emulate the Voodoo graphics card. 86Box can emulate some sound cards, such as the
AdLib Ad Lib, Inc. was a Canadian manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval. The company's best known product, the ''Ad ...
,
Sound Blaster Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards and audio peripherals designed by Creative Technology, Creative Technology/Creative Labs of Singapore. The first Sound Blaster card was introduced in 1989. Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto stan ...
(including the Game Blaster), Sound Blaster Pro,
Sound Blaster 16 The Sound Blaster 16 is a series of sound cards by Creative Technology, first released in June 1992 for IBM PC compatible, PCs with an Industry Standard Architecture, ISA or conventional PCI, PCI slot. It was the successor to the Sound Blaster ...
,
Sound Blaster AWE32 The Sound Blaster AWE32 is an ISA sound card from Creative Technology. It is an expansion board for PCs and is part of the Sound Blaster family of products. The Sound Blaster AWE32, introduced in March 1994, was a near full-length ISA sound ...
, Gravis UltraSound, Innovation SSI-2001, Aztech Sound Galaxy Pro 16, Windows Sound System,
Ensoniq AudioPCI The Ensoniq AudioPCI is a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI)-based sound card released in 1997. It was Ensoniq's last sound card product before they were acquired by Creative Technology. The card represented a shift in Ensoniq's market posi ...
64V/ES1371, and Sound Blaster PCI 128. 86Box also emulates some SCSI cards, such as SCSI cards from
BusLogic BusLogic, Inc. (originally BusTek, Inc.), was an American computer company active from 1988 to 1996. It specialized in the production of SCSI, Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) device controller chips and controller expansion cards, becoming ...
and Symbios Logic.


Operating system support

Similar to
Virtual PC Virtual PC is a discontinued x86 emulator software for Microsoft Windows hosts and PowerPC-based Mac (computer), Mac hosts. It was created by Connectix in 1997 and acquired by Microsoft in 2003, after which the program was renamed Microsoft V ...
,
Bochs Bochs (pronounced "box") is a portable IA-32 and x86-64 IBM PC compatible emulator and debugger mostly written in C++ and distributed as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License. It supports emulation of the processor(s) (includ ...
and
QEMU The Quick Emulator (QEMU) is a free and open-source emulator that uses dynamic binary translation to emulate a computer's processor; that is, it translates the emulated binary codes to an equivalent binary format which is executed by the mach ...
, 86Box supports almost all versions of
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
until
Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
(including Service Pack 1);
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...
,
FreeDOS FreeDOS (formerly PD-DOS) is a free software operating system for IBM PC compatible computers. It intends to provide a complete MS-DOS-compatible environment for running Legacy system, legacy software and supporting embedded systems. FreeDOS ca ...
and
CP/M-86 CP/M-86 is a discontinued version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research (DR) made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. The system commands are the same as in CP/M-80. Executable files used the relocatable .CMD file format. Digital Re ...
are also supported. Earlier versions of
OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...
requires the hard drive to be formatted prior to installation, while OS/2 Warp 3 until Warp 4.5 requires an unaccelerated video card to run. Other operating systems are also supported on 86Box, such as versions of
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
that support the Pentium processor, BSD derivatives (e.g.
FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...
), and BeOS 5, which only works on the Award SiS 497 motherboard.


Host operating system support

Initially exclusive to Windows, it was ported to Linux in version 3.2 and macOS in version 3.4.


Manager

For easier handling of multiple virtual machines at the same time and the change of its parameters, it is recommended to use 86Box with a GUI manager application. Some of them are 86Box Manager, 86Box Manager Lite and WinBox for 86Box, all available as free software too.


History


PCem

86Box began as a
fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods either to h ...
of PCem, another open-source IBM PC emulator. PCem was originally developed by Sarah Walker from 2007 until her retirement from the project in 2021, at which point she named Michael Manley as the new project maintainer. Like 86Box, PCem allows users to emulate PC compatibles across a range of
x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...
processors—from the
Intel 8088 The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers ...
to the
Pentium II The Pentium II is a brand of sixth-generation Intel x86 microprocessors based on the P6 (microarchitecture), P6 microarchitecture, introduced on May 7, 1997. It combined the ''P6'' microarchitecture seen on the Pentium Pro with the MMX (instruc ...
—as well as the ability to emulate
sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...
s (such as the
Sound Blaster 16 The Sound Blaster 16 is a series of sound cards by Creative Technology, first released in June 1992 for IBM PC compatible, PCs with an Industry Standard Architecture, ISA or conventional PCI, PCI slot. It was the successor to the Sound Blaster ...
) and
GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...
s (including an extremely small number of early 3D accelerators: the S3 ViRGE/325, the S3 ViRGE/DX, the 3DFX Voodoo, and the 3DFX Voodoo2, but no ATI, Nvidia, Matrox, PowerVR, or Rendition chipsets). This versatility allows older PC software with complex hardware requirements to run accurately, in terms of clock speed and multimedia performance, on modern hardware. A benefit of 86Box over mainstream
hosted hypervisor A hypervisor, also known as a virtual machine monitor (VMM) or virtualizer, is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called ...
s such as
VirtualBox Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and InnoTek VirtualBox) is a hosted hypervisor for x86 virtualization developed by Oracle Corporation. VirtualBox was originally created by InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH, which was ac ...
is the ability to run custom
BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is a type of firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization d ...
ROMs. This allows users to closely emulate specific PC compatibles, such as those by
Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology, information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compati ...
and
Asus ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (, , , ; stylized as ASUSTeK or ASUS) is a Taiwanese Multinational corporation, multinational computer, phone hardware and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan. Its products include deskto ...
, among others.


Reception

PCem has been used by archivists in academic settings to emulate older software for the purposes of displaying historical digital art. Additionally, both PCem and 86Box have been used by
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
to test their archival source code for successful compilation.


See also

*
DOSBox DOSBox is a free and open-source MS-DOS emulator. It supports running programs primarily video games that are otherwise inaccessible since hardware for running a compatible disk operating system (DOS) is obsolete and generally unavailab ...
*
DOSEMU DOSEMU, stylized as dosemu, is a compatibility layer software package that enables DOS operating systems (e.g., MS-DOS, DR-DOS, FreeDOS) and application software to run atop Linux on x86-based PCs (IBM PC compatible computers). Features It ...
*
QEMU The Quick Emulator (QEMU) is a free and open-source emulator that uses dynamic binary translation to emulate a computer's processor; that is, it translates the emulated binary codes to an equivalent binary format which is executed by the mach ...
*
Bochs Bochs (pronounced "box") is a portable IA-32 and x86-64 IBM PC compatible emulator and debugger mostly written in C++ and distributed as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License. It supports emulation of the processor(s) (includ ...
* Parallels *
VirtualBox Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and InnoTek VirtualBox) is a hosted hypervisor for x86 virtualization developed by Oracle Corporation. VirtualBox was originally created by InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH, which was ac ...
*
VMware Fusion VMware Fusion is a software hypervisor developed by VMware for macOS systems. It allows Macs with Intel or Apple M series CPUs to run virtual machines with guest operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, or macOS, within the host m ...
*
VMware Workstation VMware Workstation Pro (known as VMware Workstation until release of VMware Workstation 12 in 2015) is a hosted (Type 2) hypervisor that runs on x64 versions of Windows and Linux operating systems. It enables users to set up virtual machines (VM ...
*
Windows Virtual PC Virtual PC is a discontinued x86 emulator software for Microsoft Windows hosts and PowerPC-based Mac hosts. It was created by Connectix in 1997 and acquired by Microsoft in 2003, after which the program was renamed Microsoft Virtual PC. In ...


References


External links

* * * * 2016 software DOS emulators DOS on IBM PC compatibles Free emulation software Free software programmed in C Linux emulation software Windows emulation software X86 emulators {{emulation-stub