Bochs 2.0 Released 284
Jas Sandys-Lumsdaine writes "Bochs 2.0 has just been released - project lead Bryce Denney writes: "It's been a busy 6 months since our previous release! Bochs is now about twice as fast as version 1.4.1. Also, we can now emulate MMX instructions, SSE/SSE2, and even AMD x86-64 instructions if you turn on the appropriate configure options. The emulation improvements have paid off; several people have been able to install Windows XP recently." Excellent stuff."
Upgrade to 2.0 then tell us (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you should upgrade to 2.0 and test it out again. I think your case would be a valuable pice of information.
It's been released?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:BeOS MHz (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Would it have been so hard to say... (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason? As usual, the article submission assumes basic telepathy on the part of the reader, and doesn't explain what Bochs is (although it gives a few hints - more than we usually get).
So you go to the page, think "what is Bochs?", and if you have comments ordered by score, then bingo - the first message is telling you what Bochs is, because the submission didn't. Who cares if it's lifted - it's just information that people needed.
This is a good application of moderation, imho - if you're carefully writing thoughtful posts just so you can score some karma, then I think you may have missed the point of moderation (and karma).
It's kind of like buying a raffle ticket from a charity because you think you'll probably win. It's a nice side effect, but it's not the point of the exercise.
Tim
Why to use Bochs... (Score:3, Insightful)
So why would you want to use it?
Personally, I use it mostly to run old DOS games. Games that won't run at all under Windows (you could insert "Linux" there just as well, or "OS X", or "HP-UX", or whatever you run on reasonably modern equipment). Games that run waaaaay too fast. Games that "don'y play well with others" and you wish you could have stuck in on its own machine even when you really *did* run DOS just to keep it from breaking other programs.
It makes a GREAT debugging tool, for those who know how to write low-level code. As long as your problem doesn't involve instruction timing or asynchronous events, Bochs works almost as well as a VERY expensive ICE.
Another nice use, I already mentioned partially, you can put a program in it's own "clean room". Ever wanted to see how some of the classic virii worked but didn't have the balls to risk your own machine? Put it in a Bochs and let it do its thing.
Additionally, IMO, the speed (as of 1.4, and they claim twice the performance for 2.0) suffices for any CPU or graphics non-intensive task under Windows 95 OSR2, with FAR better compatibility than Wine (Not to disparage Wine, a great and worthy poject, but you just can't beat the real thing for accuracy of emulation )
The one "bad" thing about Bochs, and I hope a developer for it reads this, you need to manually calibrate the IPS, and then everything else *relative* to that value. Although I understand why getting an *exact* value counts as an almost impossible feat, I don't see why a simple few-second internal benchmark at startup couldn't come to within 10% of the "right" value. Admittedly, though, I haven't played with 2.0 (away from home for a few days), so if you've added that for this release, my apologies (and thanks).
Sounds cool, but useful? (Score:3, Insightful)