PC emulator

WHAT IS BOCHS?

 

Bochs is a highly portable open source IA-32 (x86) PC emulator

written in C++, that runs on most popular platforms. It includes

emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common I/O devices, and a custom

BIOS. Currently, Bochs can be compiled to emulate a 386, 486,

Pentium/PentiumII/PentiumIII/Pentium4 or x86-64 CPU, including optional

MMX, SSEx and 3DNow! instructions. Bochs is capable of running

most Operating Systems inside the emulation, for example Linux, DOS,

Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP or Windows Vista.

Bochs was written by Kevin Lawton and is currently maintained by

the Bochs project at "http://bochs.sourceforge.net".

 

 

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Changes:

Changes in 2.4 (May 3, 2009):

 

Brief summary :

 

- Added graphical Bochs debugger frontend for most of the supported platforms.

- Thanks for Chourdakis Michael and Bruce Ewing.

- Many new CPU features in emulation

- Support for > 32 bit physical address space and configurable MSRs

- VMX, 1G pages in long mode, MOVBE instruction

- Bugfixes for CPU emulation correctness, debugger and CPU instrumentation.

- New config interface 'win32config' with start and runtime menu

- USB: added OHCI support, external hub and cdrom

- Added user plugin interface support.

 

Detailed change log :

 

- CPU and internal debugger

- Support for VMX hardware emulation in Bochs CPU, to enable configure with

--enable-vmx option

Nearly complete VMX implementation, with few exceptions:

- Dual-monitor treatment of SMIs and SMM not implemented yet

- NMI virtualization, APIC virtualization not implemented yet

- VMENTER to not-active state not supported yet

- No advanced features like Extended Page Tables or VPID

- Support for configurable MSR registers emulation, to enable configure with

--enable-configurable-msrs option

Look for configuration example in .bochsrc and msrs.def

- Support new Intel Atom® MOVBE instruction, to enable configure with

--enable-movbe option

- Support for 1G pages in long mode, to enable configure with

--enable-1g-pages option

- Support for > 32 bit physical address space in CPU. Up to 36 bit could be seen in legacy mode (PAE) and up to 40 bit in x86-64 mode.

Still support the same amount of the physical memory in the memory object,

so system with > 4Gb of RAM yet cannot be emulated.

To enable configure with --enable-long-phy-address option.

- Implemented modern BIOSes mode limiting max reported CPUID function to 3 using .bochsrc CPU option. The mode is required in order to correctly install and boot WinNT.

- Added ability to configure CPUID vendor/brand strings through .bochsrc (patch from @SF by Doug Reed).

- Many bugfixes for CPU emulation correctness (both x86 and x86-64).

- Updated CPU instrumentation callbacks.

- Fixed Bochs internal debugger breakpoints/watchpoints handling.

 

- Configure and compile

- Added ability to choose Bochs log file name and Bochs debugger log file name from Bochs command line (using new -log and -dbglog options)

- Removed Peter Tattam's closed source external debugger interface from the code.

- Removed --enable-guest2host-tlb configure option. The option is always enabled for any Bochs configuration.

- Removed --enable-icache configure option. The option is always enabled for any Bochs configuration. Trace cache support still remains optional and could be configured off.

- Added configure option to compile in GUI frontend for Bochs debugger, to enable configure with --enable-debugger-gui option. The GUI debugger frontend is enabled by default with Bochs debugger.

- Removed --enable-port-e9-hack configure option. The feature now could be configured at runtime through .bochsrc.

- Added configure option to enable/disable A20 pin support. Disabling the A20 pin support slightly speeds up the emulation.

- reduced dependencies between source files for faster code generation

 

- BIOS

- Added S3 (suspend to RAM) ACPI state to BIOS (patch by Gleb Natapov)

- Implemented MTRR support in the bios (patches by Avi Kivity and Alex Williamsion with additions by Sebastian Herbszt)

- Bug fixes

 

- I/O Devices

- Added user plugin support

- remaining devices converted to plugins: pit, ioapic, iodebug

- added 'plugin_ctrl' bochsrc option to control the presence of optional device plugins without a separate option. By default all plugins are enabled.

- added register mechanism for removable mouse and keyboard devices

- Hard drive / cdrom

- PACKET-DMA feature now supported by all ATAPI commands

- ATAPI command 0x1A added (based on the Qemu implementation)

- sb16

- Added ALSA sound support on Linux (PCM/MIDI output)

- FM synthesizer now usable with MIDI output (simple piano only)

- Fixed OPL frequency to MIDI note translation

- Fixed MIDI output command

- keyboard

- added keyboard controller commands 0xCA and 0xCB

- USB

- USB code reorganized to support more HC types and devices

- added USB OHCI support written by Ben Lunt

- added external USB hub support (initial code ported from Qemu)

- added USB cdrom support (SCSI layer ported from Qemu)

- added status bar indicators to show data transfer

- VGA

- VBE video memory increased to 16 MB

- implemented changeable VBE LFB base address (PCI only, requires latest BIOS and VGABIOS images)

- I/O APIC

- implemented I/O APIC device hardware reset

 

- Config interface

- new config interface 'win32config' with start and runtime menu is now the default on Windows ('textconfig' is still available)

- win32 device config dialogs are now created dynamicly from a parameter list (works like the wx ParamDialog)

- changes in textcofig and the wx ParamDialog for compatibility with the new win32 dialog behaviour

- Bochs param tree index keys are case independent now

- some other additions / bugfixes in the simulator interface code

 

- Misc

- updated LGPL'd VGABIOS to version 0.6c

- Updated Bochs TESTFORM to version 0.4

>> Get it HERE.

MSX emulator

A new version of the great emulator blueMSX is available !

 

This version comes with many bugfixes and some nice additions.

Here's the complete list of changes :

 

- Added a virtual MSX2 console based on the Korean Haesung console

- Added the Bit Corporation Dina console (Coleco part with built-in game)

- Added support for 16kB, 32kB, 48kB and 64kB external ram cartridges

- Added support for Joyrex PSG module

- Added support for PSG pin 6/7 quirk

- Added support for VR bit in VDP register 8

- Added support for Nowind MSXDOS1 and MSXDOS2 disk rom in Special cartridge menu

- Added new machine configurations, including Frael Bruc 100 (1st version) and Philips VG-8000/8010/8010F

- Added 23 new cheats

- Updated several machine configurations

- Extended the manual section about the keyboard

- Fixed SVI M1 wait state

- Fixed ColecoVision Keyboard read error

- Fixed ColeceVision PSG noise bug

- Fixed DirectX initialization bug

- Fixed V9958 Scroll masking bug in Screen 4 (introduced in 2.8 )

- Fixed Screen 2 scroll bug

- Fixed R15 PSG register read

- Fixed bug in VDP line engine

- Fixed bug in Obsonet write method

- Fixed bug in Harryfox rom mapper

- Fixed bug in Crossblaim rom mapper

- Fixed bug in Korean bootleg rom mapper

- Made bluemsxlite compile on Mac OSX

- Fixed bug in Arkanoid Pad emulation

- Fixed addressing bug in R-Type mapper

- Fixed x/y flags on scf/ccf instructions

- Fixed instructions ld a,i or ld a,r to handle interrupts correctly

>> Get it HERE.

Rom Manager

Changes related to MAME v0.130 and MAME v0.131:

 

- Updated a few existing definitions to account for MAME ROM renames.

- Added a couple of Neo-Geo sound ROMs.

>> Get it HERE.

Atari 2600 emulator

May 1, 2009

 

Stella release 2.7.7 for Linux, Mac OSX and Windows is now available. Ports to other operating systems will be released as they become available.

 

- Corrected emulation of CPU opcodes involving 'decimal' mode (ADC/RRA and SBC/ISB). Special thanks to SeaGtGruff and others on the Stella mailing list for in-depth discussion and creation of test ROMs.

 

- Fixed bug in F4SC bankswitching mode; writes to bankswitch addresses weren't triggering a bank switch.

 

- Changed internal sound frequency of Pitfall 2 from 15.75KHz to 20KHz, as this sounds much more authentic when compared to a real cartridge.

>> Get it HERE.