Thread: PC Emulators

  1. #1
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    PC Emulators

    I have been searching around and have found many PC emulators on the internet including VMware. I have read through many descriptions but my ignorance on the topic makes me hesitant in just randomly picking one. I was wondering if anyone here has had any experience is using emulators and may have some suggestions on a good emulator or even some key points to look at when picking one.

    *EDIT* Wrong board, sorry for that. Thanks for moving it.
    Last edited by AndrewHunter; 06-14-2011 at 11:52 AM.

  2. #2
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    WMWare is not an emulator. If anything, it should be called a virtualizator. Emulation is quite different.
    But I take it you mean you want to run another PC inside your PC, so to speak. A virtual OS. That's what these kinds of products were designed for.
    It really depends on your needs. I think there used to be some free WMWare version, but generally it's quite complex. Microsoft also has their own--Microsoft Virtual PC or something. Long ago since I used it last, so I don't know how it works today.
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    Thanks for the reply. Yes, I guess I do mean a virtualizer. Basically I want to play around with boot programming without actually testing things out on real hardware. I know I am going to get hiccups along the way and I don't want to trash anything real while I learn.

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    Always used VirtualBox myself.

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    Thanks for the reply, I just read through some of the documentation for VirtualBox. I'm not sure if I am reading it correctly but it seems you need to either have a CD or load an image file to run the guest OS. Is it possible just to experiment with a boot loader with VirtualBox, aka use the virtual HDD it creates to test out a boot loader?

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    You are probably better off using an emulator such as bochs for boot loader coding. OSDev contains loads of resources, everything from basic bootloaders to barebone kernels and so on.

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    Thanks Shakti, looks like a great place to start.

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