VOGONS


First post, by blib

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I'm sorry if this is covered elsewhere, but I could not see any reference to this on the site or these forums
I was wondering which emulator dosbox used to emulate the x86 cpu. From the site and the forums, I guess it is using its own, but I am not sure. If it is a unique emulator, what kind of emulator is it?
Would there be any benefit in using any code from a project like qemu? I have not used qemu personally, but from what I understand it is a very fast emulator.

Blib.

Reply 1 of 2, by Srecko

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Dosbox uses it's own x86 cpu emulator. In fact, there are 3 different cpu "cores" available (different cpu emulators).
Dynamic core is faster in some cases because it uses instruction caching.

It also emulates most popular PC hardware and many DOS interrupts/functions and uses host's file system
(by mapping file handling interrupts to host system).
It is platform independent and uses SDL.
Btw., with projects like Bochs, Dosemu, MAME, it'd be stupid not to use their code and knowledge as a base or reference.