VOGONS


First post, by superfury

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l33t++

What are the minimum chips that need to be emulated on a x86 emulator? Anyone knows if this is enough to run MS-DOS/Windows/Linux/*nix?

Currently implemented in my emulator:
------------------------------------------------
CPU/FPU:
- 80(1)86 CPU. Still working on 286+.
- FPU opcodes throw exceptions (no FPU implemented).
External hardware (I/O ports):
- 8042 PS/2 controller with mouse and keyboard.
- 8237A DMA controller (still unknown if it's correct (see my other 8237A DMA Controller emulation verification)).
- 8253 PIT (with PC speaker audio passthrough).
- 8259A PIC (linked to the CPU emulation).
- Adlib (copied and adjusted from fake86).
- CMOS chip with RTC.
Interrupt handlers:
- empty int05 handler.
- Video interrupt (int10) handler. Based on Dosbox's int10 handler, with only VGA compatibility (others stripped out) and adjusted to the emulator.
- Simple BIOS equipment (int11) handler.
- Disk BIOS (int13) handler, accessing disks directly (configured through BIOS for mounting/unmounting (both dynamic (.img+.img.dat) and static (.img) disks)).
- Unfinished BIOS Keyboard (int16) handler.
- BIOS BASIC (int18) handler, causing a full emulator reset.
- BIOS boot routine (int19) handler, causing a boot from floppy/harddisk/cdrom, based on the BIOS boot order.

Author of the UniPCemu emulator.
UniPCemu Git repository
UniPCemu for Android, Windows, PSP, Vita and Switch on itch.io

Reply 1 of 1, by HardwareExtreme

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Rank Newbie
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Newbie

What do you mean? MS-DOS will run on 8086/8088 processors. I bet earlier versions will run on even older processors. What is your question? And, 286s and earlier are 8 bit or 16 bit only.

Q: Why didn't Intel call the Pentium the 586?
A: Because they added 486 and 100 on the first Pentium and got 585.999983605.

Source: http://www.columbia.edu/~sss31/rainbow/pentium.jokes.html