Bochs

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Bochs for Windows displaying HAL91 (Linux)

Bochs is a portable x86 and AMD64 PCs emulator mostly written in C++ and distributed as free software under GNU Lesser General Public License. It supports emulation of the processor(s) (including protected mode), memory, disks, display, ethernet, BIOS and common hardware peripherals of PCs.

Many guest operating systems can be run using the emulator including DOS, several versions of Windows, BSDs, and Linux. Bochs can run on many host operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and the Xbox.

Bochs is mostly used for operating system development (when an emulated operating system crashes, it does not crash the host operating system, so the emulated OS can be debugged) and to run other guest operating systems inside already running host operating systems. Some people use it to run older software - such as computer games - which will not run on their non-compatible computers.

A Windows CE developer operating under the pseudonym "Mamaich" ported Bochs as a proof of concept to the embedded Microsoft platform, taking the port through the 1.x release with his final public build being based upon the BOCHS 2.1.1 source tree. The release, aimed at the ARM architecture (specifically the SA1110 and PXA25x variants) demonstrated the increased power present in modern PDA devices, allowing for - at least as a proof of concept - an IA32 environment to be emulated on-top of the ARM architecture. Mamaich's distribution vanished from the Internet in mid-2005 and can now be downloaded from HPC:Factor.

Screenshot of Bochs running Windows 95, using Windows XP as the host operating system.

1 Use
2 History
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Use

Bochs can emulate the hardware needed by the guest operating system, including hard drives, CD drives, and floppy drives. Disk and ISO images can be "inserted" while the system is being run. However, the system performance is very slow due to the fact that it is only emulated. It doesn't provide any CPU virtualization features. However, it is useful for capturing screen shots in researching old DOS software.

[edit] History

Bochs started as a program with a commercial license, at the price of $25, for use as-is. If a user would need to link it to other software, that user would have to negotiate a special license. That changed in 22 March 2000, when Mandrakesoft (now Mandriva) bought it and released it for GNU/Linux under the LGPL license.