Reply 20 of 48, by MiniMax
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I am not saying that Bochs is better than DOSBox - that would be like comparing oranges to apples. They are both emulators, but their goals are different.
The goal of Bochs is to provide an IA-32 platform that will run any IA-32 code, including operating systems like MS-DOS, FreeDOS, DR-DOS, Win9x, WinNT, Linux, Novell, etc, etc. It also aims at providing an environment that makes it possible to debug the IA-32 code (e.g. device drivers) running in the emulator.
With the new imgmount and boot commands in DOSBox 0.62, DOSBox is starting to offer some of the same flexibility as Bochs wrt. being able to run a wider selection of operating systems, but the ability to emulate a wider range of hardware (except for game-related devices such as sound and graphics) is still (and will continue to be?) limited compared to Bochs.
Finally, I do not agree when DOSBox fans say that Bochs is difficult to configure. It is different, but not difficult. E.g. while DOSBox supports mounting of virtual hard drives, virtual CD-ROM's and virtual diskettes, Bochs simply gives you a diskette controller and up to 4 emulated ATA-controllers, complete with master and slave devices. You point the controller(s) to an image file, set the geometry, inserted/ejected status, boot your operating system and load any required devices drivers - exactly as you would in the good, old days. True, it can be a little picky about the driver, but the Oaktree driver that came with Win98 works fine for me when I want to access an emulated CD-ROM attached as a slave devices to ATA-0.
You want networking? Load an NDIS driver that speaks to the emulated 3Com card, and you can run IPX or TCP/IP to your heart bursts open.
(can I be the 3rd hijacker, please?)
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