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Translating instead of emulating ?

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First post, by nnn

Posted on 
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Hi,
I don't know if it's realisable but couldn't DosBox have a function of "static translating" : it would make a "native" executable file from the emulated executable files (the native executable would be different on each OS and/or architecture because of needs of course), I mean it would translate all DOS calls (reading files, graphic functions) in "native" calls (using SDL calls, OS calls). I think the not-any-more-emulated-programs would be really faster, since they aren't emulated "line by line".
If it can be done, it should be a sub-project (emulating would still be possible), and as it can represent a big work, you could do it for only very few platforms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_translation

notes: sorry for my bad english and my fake-good-vocabulary.
thanks

Reply 1 of 2, by DosFreak

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Dynamic Recompilation is already used (only for x86). It's very hard to get working correctly, which is proven by the fact that it's the least compatible option of all of the DosBox cores.

Look in your DosBox.conf for CORE= and choose dynamic core.

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Reply 2 of 2, by Lofty

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Interpretation is usually the slowest, but most compatible and easiest to implement emulation technique (this is what dosbox uses by default). Dynamic recompilation is a lot faster, but tends to suffer a bit compatibility wise, and is harder to implement. Static translation can certainly be very fast, but like that wikipedia article says, it's not easy to do, and it tends to have the worst compatibility out of these techiques (though there are emulators that use it, eg. the N64 emulator "Corn").

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