The SciTech x86emu is an emulator for
executing Intel x86 real mode code on any CPU platform,
including the Intel x86 CPU family. The emulator started out as
the free equivalent to
the Digital Equipment x86 emulator used in the Linux
MILO loader. The project was originally started and developed
by David Mosberger-Tang,
and after David lost interest in the project SciTech
took over as the official maintainers. Since then the
emulator has been updated
to include support for 32-bit real mode instructions,
optimised for better performance, and should be able
to completely replace the
Digitial Equipment proprietry emulator in MILO.
This emulator has lots of different
uses for Linux and other platforms. Some of those include
Ability to POST multi-head
graphics controller configurations on x86 platforms using
the existing adapter BIOS.
Ability to POST the primary
controller on non-x86 platforms to bring it up into text
mode.
Ability to provide the any
platform with an interface that the is capable of calling
the a VESA VBE BIOS on any number of controllers at runtime.
This will allow programs to switch graphics modes on the
fly, program the hardware palette etc. On adapters with
a VBE/Core 3.0 BIOS, this also includes full refresh rate
control out of the box!
Ability to run any x86 real
mode code (with 32-bit extensions) on any platform. It
could be used to execute the real mode BIOS on any type
of adapter, not just graphics cards.
