I’ve seen a couple conversations about older or more esoteric operating systems, so I thought I’d make a post about 86Box and why I like the project.

86Box (a fork of PCem) is a low-level emulator for a wide variety of hardware from old PCs. Unlike most modern emulators which prioritize speed, it prioritizes accuracy of hardware emulation. This means it has all the quirks and features (and bios screens) you’d expect in old hardware.

It can emulate a variety of systems from the first IBM PC up to the Pentium era. It has a surprisingly large variety of motherboards, storage controllers, disk drive models, network cards, graphics cards, etc.

To test it out, I set up something close to my first PC:

• 486 DX2 66
• ASUS PVI-486SP3C Motherboard
• S3 Trio64V+
• 234MB 4500RPM HDD
• Novell NE2000 ISA network card

I set it up with Dos 6.22, Windows 3.1, network drivers, mTCP, winpacket, trumpet winsock, and I’m on the internet in both dos and windows.

While something very similar could be accomplished with dosbox, virtualbox or qemu, I enjoyed the experience of using the ‘actual’ hardware. I also imagine it will support old quirky software more reliably than the alternatives.

I think a Windows 9x system with a 3dfx Voodoo card will be my next build.

So, Anyone else used 86Box or a similar emulator? What for? How did it go?