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Usefulness

nepx edited this page May 13, 2020 · 2 revisions

How is this emulator useful?

  • It's an exercise in writing portable code.
  • It's an exercise in writing fast code.
  • It's a rather simple, but complete, implementation of an x86 CPU in software.
  • You can use the #defines in include/cpu/cpu.h in other projects.
  • Push the WebAssembly engine in modern browsers to its limit. How well does Firefox boot Windows XP?
  • Test unusual and rare combinations of hardware and software.
  • Running old games on modern systems. Space Cadet Pinball from Windows 2000 works really well.
  • Operating systems development -- I used the emulator to develop my toy OS.
  • Running programs that no longer work on modern systems. I created Halfix because I needed a secure environment to run a web application that used VBScript and targeted Internet Explorer 6.
  • Self-virtualization (not really useful from a practical perspective, but still very cool).
  • Make the x86 architecture less intimidating.
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