86Box

86Box is a low level x86 emulator that runs older operating systems and software designed for IBM PC systems and compatibles from 1981 through fairly recent system designs based on the PCI bus.

Features

Easy to use interface inspired by mainstream hypervisor software
Low level emulation of 8086-based processors up to the Pentium with focus on accuracy
Great range of customizability of virtual machines
Many available systems, such as the very first IBM PC 5150 from 1981, or the more obscure IBM PS/2 line of systems based on the Micro Channel Architecture
Lots of supported peripherals including video adapters, sound cards, network adapters, hard disk controllers, and SCSI adapters
MIDI output to Windows built-in MIDI support, FluidSynth, or emulated Roland synthesizers
Supports running MS-DOS, older Windows versions, OS/2, many Linux distributions, or vintage systems such as BeOS or NEXTSTEP, and applications for these systems

Minimum system requirements and recommendations

Intel Core 2 or AMD Athlon 64 processor
Windows version: Windows 7 Service Pack 1, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10
Linux version: Ubuntu 16.04, Debian 9.0 or other distributions from 2016 onwards
macOS version: macOS High Sierra 10.13
4 GB of RAM

Performance may vary depending on both host and guest configuration. Most emulation logic is executed in a single thread; therefore, systems with better IPC (instructions per clock) generally should be able to emulate higher clock speeds.

It is also recommended to use a manager application with 86Box for easier handling of multiple virtual machines.

86Box Manager by Overdoze (Windows only)
86Box Manager Lite by Insanemal
WinBox for 86Box by Laci bá' (Windows only)

It is also possible to use 86Box on its own with the --vmpath/-P command line option.

Getting started

See our documentation for an overview of the emulator's features and user interface.

Community

We operate an IRC channel and a Discord server for discussing 86Box, its development and anything related to retro computing. We look forward to hearing from you!

Licensing

86Box is released under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. For more information, see the COPYING file in the root of the repository.

The emulator can also optionally make use of munt, FluidSynth, Ghostscript and Discord Game SDK, which are distributed under their respective licenses.

Contribution requirements

Formal codification of the project's emulated hardware contribution requirements, which all have to be met to accept an addition:

A ROM must be available;
Documentation must be available or it must be feasible to reverse engineer with a reasonable amount of time and effort;
It must be feasible to implement with a reasonable amount of time and effort;
It has to fall inside the project's scope.

Where unsure or for more details about the project's emulated hardware contribution requirements, contact a Contributor or higher.

Donations

We do not charge you for the emulator but donations are still welcome: https://paypal.me/86Box.

You can also support the project on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/86box.

iamgreaser/86Box