Feedback on x86 emulator

[Jaybot]

Dan's super busy right now, and he has a life, and no one is paying him.  So saying that this project is dead only after a few months of not hearing much is kinda weak.  I imagine Dan also has many other projects on his hands and this one (while it seems the most important to you or I) it isn't exactly whath the rest of the world (including Dan) wants right now.. so I imagine it's not on the top of his To Do list.  Otherwise he would have responded to someone's 'is this dead?' post about 4 pages ago.  Leave him alone and pray.  And hopefully Dan will come out someday.

[Dan East]

As others have said, I am very busy, and spending many hours writing software for tens of thousands of people to enjoy for FREE is not a high priority. My real business comes first (writing medical software), then my secret commercial project, then PQ, Bochs, UAE for Pocket PC, etc.<br>I do have Bochs "ported" and working. At this time I only have VGA text mode supported. As stated earlier in this thread I have done benchmarks with Bochs running on my iPaq, and it is extremely slow. Gaming is pretty much out of the question, but it will be very useful for other types of apps, even Windows 95, etc. At this point there are two major things holding it up:<br>1 - I need to create some sort of custom SIP that works with GAPI, where I can rotate the SIP for landscape mode. The SIP will also have to be draggable, so you can move it around to see all areas of the screen. A future enhancement I have in mind for PQ will be a very flexible map / skin system flexible enough for SIP type use. I would most likely use that same library for both projects.<br><br>2 - I need to finish the graphical VGA support.<br><br>Some other issues / comments:<br><br>I got the same benchmark results in Bochs when it was running on my 206 mhz iPaq as when running on my 300 mhz PII laptop. I don't know what's up with that.<br><br>Bochs uses a hard drive image file. That is just a large file (as large as you want the virtual HDD to be). You have to use a suite of finicky, poorly documented DOS-based utils to move files to / from those HDD image files. In fact, the documentation was so bad and obscure that I had to look at the source code for those tools to understand how they were to be used. Other emulators, such as UAE, allow you to simply specify a folder on your device which will then be used as the root directory of a HDD. That is certainly the best solution, because you can then access the same set of files directly from your Pocket PC as well as within the emulator. I don't know what amount of work would be required for that type of support, but I feel it would be necessary for Bochs to really be useful on a Pocket PC.<br><br>I strongly suggest that those interested in this project download the Windows version of Bochs and run it on their Windows PC. Yeah, I know, running a Pentium emu on your Pentium machine seems like a waste of electrons, but your hardware can't care. I have tried a few older, DOS-based games in the Windows version of Bochs, and they caused it to crash. What I would like to see is someone setup Bochs and run Windows and various other games and large apps, just to see what the quality of Bochs is really like, and what type of game compatibility we'll see. You could then just copy your HDD image file over to your Micro Drive and use it with Pocket Bochs when it is ready.<br><br>Dan East

[MZGuy]

Sorry if I sounded demanding or something, it's just kinda interesting with a x86 emu. I understand that Dan can't give this a top priority when he isn't getting paid for it.

[jongjungbu]

Interesting ideas, Dan. I would try what you say myself with Bochs but at the moment I'm packing up to fly across the country for a few days. Darn it. But if no one does anything by the time I get back, I will mess with it. I do useless stuff like that all the time. <br><br>

[MZGuy]

Dan:<br>I've dled Bochs win32 version and am gonna do some testing with win95 on it. I do not have a PocketPC (yet at least), but I can try to test some games and apps on it.

[MZGuy]

Hmm, I need a util that can write to .img disk images...

[MZGuy]

Ok a question, how do I assign a drive letter to a directory on a HD??

[Dan East]

The Win32 Bochs I downloaded (BochsWin32-991114a.zip) came with the various tools, such as makeimg.exe and mtools.exe.<br><br>Dan East

[Dan East]

I don't quite understand your last question. If you are trying to make a directory on your real computer become a virtual drive in the emulator, then you can't. Bochs only uses drive images. <br><br>Dan East

[MZGuy]

Yea with my version came one tool for making empty images, but I need to make a img of the win95 cd (which I have in a dir on my HD) and mtools seems to be kinda complicated, but I've found a tool that can write a HD or some other drive to a iso, img... and that's why I need to assign a drive letter to a dir...

[Moose or Chuck]

o you want to mount and iso, there are programs for that. Look around, i think its kind of a warez thing thou. So you might have to check like astalavista.com and stuff. I used to mount my iso's before i had a burner. But i deleted the program i used

[MZGuy]

No that's not what I mean. I need to assign a drive letter to a dir so the tool can write the "fake"drive to a img file, which I could then use in bochs.

[MZGuy]

Forget the question, it wouldn't work.<br>Darn any hints on how to put the win cd in a img file???

[Dan East]

Have you tried using MCOPYDIR.BAT? CD into your CD and try it there.<br><br>Dan East

[MZGuy]

Eh mcopydir.bat?? Where did you download your version?