Introduced the release of the project 86Box 5.3, which develops an emulator of systems based on the x86 architecture, with which you can run old operating systems and applications, including those that were used in the early 1980s on IBM PC 5150 and IBM PS/2 computers. Accurate low-level emulation of systems is supported, from 8086 processors to Intel Celeron Mendocino. The project code is written in C and distributed under the GPLv2 license.
To manage the work, a graphical interface is provided with options for configuring virtual machines. Emulation of various peripheral devices is available, such as video adapters, sound cards, network cards and hard drive controllers.
Supported operating systems include: MS-DOS, Windows 3.11/95, OS/2, various Linux distributions, BeOS, NEXTSTEP and other older operating systems.
In new release:
- Added optimizations to improve productivity. By switching to a new runtime library, performance on Windows hosts has been improved. The dynamic recompiler used on systems with ARM architecture and Apple Silicon processors has been accelerated. Thanks to the use of multi-threading, the emulation performance of Voodoo, ATI Mach64 and S3 video cards has been increased.
- The disk drive emulator has increased the realism of sounds produced while working with a floppy disk, such as spindle rotation and head movement. The collection of disk drive sounds is included in a separate package. Added sounds recorded on two 3.5-inch and three 5.25-inch drives.
- Added a customizable key combination Ctrl+Alt+Page Down to show and hide the 86Box interface in full screen mode.
- Added a button to the toolbar, as well as a menu item and keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+I to temporarily disable the dynamic recompiler for selected applications.
- Added a panel for quickly executing frequently used commands.
- Added icons to the menu.
- Changed the emulation speed indicator.
- Added computer emulation:
- 486 Socket 1: IBM PS/55 model 5550-V.
- 586 Socket 5: HP Pavilion 50×0/70xx.
- 586 Socket 7: ASUS TX97-XV, HP Pavilion 51xx/7070/7090/71xx, 52xx/53xx/71xx/72xx, 73xx/74xx.
- 686 Slot 1: MSI MS-6199VA (+ options BIOS from Compaq and Packard Bell).
- 686 Socket 370: MSI MS-6318 (+ BIOS options from Elonex, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP and Medion), Samsung CAIRO-5.
- Implemented emulation of Crystal CS4232 ISA, OPTi 82C930 and OPTi 82C931 sound cards ISA.
- Emulation of CD drives HITACHI CDR-8435, TOSHIBA XM-6102B, NEC SCSI CD-ROM DRIVE:900, PLEXTOR SCSI CD-ROM PX-12CS, PX-12TS, PX-83CS, TOSHIBA SCSI CD-ROM XM-3701B has been implemented.