UselessSoftware wrote on 2026-03-30, 03:03:

It was still in a pretty broken state last time I made a post, but I've been doing a lot of work on it over the last few months […]
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It was still in a pretty broken state last time I made a post, but I've been doing a lot of work on it over the last few months and fixed numerous bugs, CPU and otherwise.

It now runs Windows NT 4.0 for example. The main blocker there was that my V86 mode handling was really broken, and NT requires it to be functional to even do something as basic as set the graphics mode with the standard VGA driver.

Last time I posted, the only 32-bit OS it would run was some older Linux distros, and even then with various issues and occasional process crashes.

I've also added ATAPI CD-ROM, PCI bus, BusLogic SCSI, and the i430FX + i430HX chipset. The CPU is also now basically at a Pentium baseline.

I haven't pushed a version that can run NT or with the other new features to Github yet, but should be this week probably. I want to add a better and PCI-based SVGA card first. It's mostly implemented (GD5440) but not quite done.

But I'm just sharing because this makes me happy! It's always been a bucket list goal to make a working x86 PC emu, and it's really getting there lately.

Can You get OpenGL 1.1 software acceleration?

Nice work!

Awesome work on PCulator so far! 😀

DLL hell wrote on 2026-03-30, 03:41:

UselessSoftware wrote on 2026-03-30, 03:03:

It was still in a pretty broken state last time I made a post, but I've been doing a lot of work on it over the last few months […]
Show full quote

It was still in a pretty broken state last time I made a post, but I've been doing a lot of work on it over the last few months and fixed numerous bugs, CPU and otherwise.

It now runs Windows NT 4.0 for example. The main blocker there was that my V86 mode handling was really broken, and NT requires it to be functional to even do something as basic as set the graphics mode with the standard VGA driver.

Last time I posted, the only 32-bit OS it would run was some older Linux distros, and even then with various issues and occasional process crashes.

I've also added ATAPI CD-ROM, PCI bus, BusLogic SCSI, and the i430FX + i430HX chipset. The CPU is also now basically at a Pentium baseline.

I haven't pushed a version that can run NT or with the other new features to Github yet, but should be this week probably. I want to add a better and PCI-based SVGA card first. It's mostly implemented (GD5440) but not quite done.

But I'm just sharing because this makes me happy! It's always been a bucket list goal to make a working x86 PC emu, and it's really getting there lately.

Can You get OpenGL 1.1 software acceleration?

It should work! I haven't tried. I did try UT99 and its software renderer works.

The "47 FPS" is a lie. Or misleading. That's the rate it's rendering SVGA memory and blitting to the SDL window.

UT99 is actually rendering at more like 0.5 FPS 🤣

GloriousCow wrote on 2026-03-30, 06:34:

Nice work!

ppgrainbow wrote on 2026-03-30, 10:08:

Awesome work on PCulator so far! 😀

Thanks guys! I'm installing this right now... going to see how it runs. Assuming something doesn't break before it's finished!

I was also able to install Server 2003, which runs all the way through the GUI portion of setup, but then... hangs at a black screen on the first actual boot. I'm trying to dig into why.

UselessSoftware wrote on 2026-04-02, 03:24:

Thanks guys! I'm installing this right now... going to see how it runs. Assuming something doesn't break before it's finished! […]
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GloriousCow wrote on 2026-03-30, 06:34:

Nice work!

ppgrainbow wrote on 2026-03-30, 10:08:

Awesome work on PCulator so far! 😀

Thanks guys! I'm installing this right now... going to see how it runs. Assuming something doesn't break before it's finished!

I was also able to install Server 2003, which runs all the way through the GUI portion of setup, but then... hangs at a black screen on the first actual boot. I'm trying to dig into why.

UselessSoftware, any idea how the operand sizes and truncation of (E)IP/(E)SP works when handling interrupts and call gates that push those contents onto the (higher) privileged stack? What for example happens with the use of D/B bits of the lower and higher privileged program during stack switches, TSS (E)SP loads and storing return values on the (new) stack when combined with call/interrupt gate size and the user and kernel D(CS)/B(SS) bits?
For some reason I never got 2000/XP booting, despite NT 4 booting without issues (i440fx with ATAPI drive). Kept getting 0x7B BSODs no matter what on 2000 and up.

Or make your current code available so I can see how it's supposed to work?

Probably a silly question, but you seem likely to know.

Would it be possible in a simpleish way:
Boot an emulatory thing like this on say, "core2" and then boot any other legacy os like dos, 9x as normal on core1 without something crashing?

Think picogus or similar hardware emulation without the physical hardware, or virtual machines, and effectively no overhead. More like a tsr with a separate processor/os.

I can imagine it working, but I can also imagine it having serious problems with memory management and the likes.