Demos
API examples
Using v86 for your own purposes is as easy as:
var emulator = new V86Starter({
screen_container: document.getElementById("screen_container"),
bios: {
url: "../../bios/seabios.bin",
},
vga_bios: {
url: "../../bios/vgabios.bin",
},
cdrom: {
url: "../../images/linux.iso",
},
autostart: true,
});
See API.
How does it work?
v86 emulates an x86-compatible CPU and hardware. Here's a list of emulated hardware:
- An x86 compatible CPU. The instruction set is around Pentium 1 level. Some
features are missing, more specifically:
- Task gates, far calls in protected mode
- 16 bit protected mode features
- Single stepping
- MMX, SSE
- A bunch of FPU instructions
- Some exceptions
- A floating point unit (FPU). Calculations are done with JavaScript's double
precision numbers (64 bit), so they are not as precise as calculations on a
real FPU (80 bit).
- A floppy disk controller (8272A).
- An 8042 Keyboard Controller, PS2. With mouse support.
- An 8254 Programmable Interval Timer (PIT).
- An 8259 Programmable Interrupt Controller (PIC).
- A CMOS Real Time Clock (RTC).
- A VGA controller with SVGA support and Bochs VBE Extensions.
- A PCI bus. This one is partly incomplete and not used by every device.
- An IDE disk controller.
- An NE2000 (8390) PCI network card.
- A virtio filesystem.
Testing
The disk images are not included in this repository. You can download them
directly from the website using:
wget -P images/ https://copy.sh/v86/images/{linux.iso,linux3.iso,kolibri.img,windows101.img,os8.dsk,freedos722.img,openbsd.img}
.
A testsuite is available in tests/full/
. Run it using node tests/full/run.js
.
How to build, run and embed?
- Building is only necessary for releases, open debug.html and everything should load out of the box
- If you want a compressed and fast (i.e. with debug code removed) version, you
need Closure Compiler. Download it as shown below and run
make build/v86_all.js
.
- ROM and disk images are loaded via XHR, so if you want to try out
index.html
locally, make sure to serve it from a local webserver. You can use make run
to serve the files using Python's SimpleHTTPServer.
- If you only want to embed v86 in a webpage you can use libv86.js. For
usage, check out the API and examples.
- A couple of disk images are provided for testing. You can check them out
using
wget -P images/ https://copy.sh/v86/images/{linux.iso,linux3.iso,kolibri.img,windows101.img,os8.dsk,freedos722.img,openbsd.img}
.
Short summary:
# grab the main repo
git clone https://github.com/copy/v86.git && cd v86
# grab the disk images
wget -P images/ https://copy.sh/v86/images/{linux.iso,linux3.iso,kolibri.img,windows101.img,os8.dsk,freedos722.img,openbsd.img}
# grab closure compiler
wget -P closure-compiler https://dl.google.com/closure-compiler/compiler-latest.zip
unzip -d closure-compiler closure-compiler/compiler-latest.zip *.jar
# build the library
make build/libv86.js
# run the tests
./tests/full/run.js
Compatibility
Here's an overview of the operating systems supported in v86:
- Linux works pretty well. Graphical boot fails in many versions, but you
mostly get a shell. The mouse is often not detected automatically.
- Damn Small Linux (2.4 Kernel): Works, takes circa 10 minutes to boot.
- Tinycore (3.0 kernel):
udev
and X
fail, but you get a
terminal.
- Nanolinux works.
- Archlinux works with some caveats. See archlinux.md.
- ReactOS works
- FreeDOS, Windows 1.01 and MS-DOS run very well.
- KolibriOS works. A few applications need SSE.
- Haiku boots, but takes very long (around 30 minutes).
- No Android version seems to work, you still get a shell.
- Windows 1, 95 and 98 work. Other versions currently don't.
- Many hobby operating systems work.
- FreeBSD works
You can get some infos on the disk images here: https://github.com/copy/images.
How can I contribute?
- Add new features (hardware devices, fill holes in the CPU), fix bugs. Check
out the issues section and contact me if you need help.
- Report bugs.
- If you want to donate, let me know.
License
Simplified BSD License, see LICENSE, unless otherwise noted.
Credits
More questions?
Shoot me an email to copy@copy.sh
. Please don't tell about bugs via mail,
create a bug report on GitHub instead.
Author
Fabian Hemmer (http://copy.sh/, copy@copy.sh
)