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V86 – An x86-compatible CPU and hardware emulator

github.com

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Re: V86 – An x86-compatible CPU and hardware emulator

#31

Post by mankash666 »

kelvin0 wrote: post #30
mankash666 wrote: post #27

The "Why" section in the Readme doesn't quite explain the need for this. Can someone shed light on how and why this is useful Thanks

When you have to ask "Why", you usually are not part of 'target audience' for this type of thing :) All jokes aside,this is a pretty big achievement for a given programmer to complete and denotes quite a bit of technical chops on many level (hardware, systems, OS, and web dev).

Ah ok - "if you're not the target customer, no need to explain the product to you". Great mantra to live life by! You don't happen to work in marketing, do you?

Re: V86 – An x86-compatible CPU and hardware emulator

#32

Post by ghshephard »

mankash666 wrote: post #27

The "Why" section in the Readme doesn't quite explain the need for this. Can someone shed light on how and why this is useful Thanks

I thought they were pretty explicit: "I decided to work on this as a fun project and learn something about the x86 architecture."

That seems to be more than enough reason to me.

Re: V86 – An x86-compatible CPU and hardware emulator

#33

Post by jlappi »

mankash666 wrote: post #31
kelvin0 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have to ask "Why", you usually are not part of 'target audience' for this type of thing :) All jokes aside,this is a pretty big achievement for a given programmer to complete and denotes quite a bit of technical chops on many level (hardware, systems, OS, and web dev).

Ah ok - "if you're not the target customer, no need to explain the product to you". Great mantra to live life by! You don't happen to work in marketing, do you?

>customer

You see, that's where you're way off base. Not everything shown here is going to be a 'product'; people often like to learn by doing, and showing what they create.

Re: V86 – An x86-compatible CPU and hardware emulator

#34

Post by rahkiin »

JosephRedfern wrote: post #19
anawar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, a few of the live demos have networking enabled.

But they're not internet connected, are they? I tried `ping 8.8.8.8` from each of them without any luck.

I pinged successfully from the linux 3 machine. You need to run a command first though, it says so two lines above where the shell begins

Re: V86 – An x86-compatible CPU and hardware emulator

#36

Post by khedoros »

mankash666 wrote: post #31
kelvin0 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have to ask "Why", you usually are not part of 'target audience' for this type of thing :) All jokes aside,this is a pretty big achievement for a given programmer to complete and denotes quite a bit of technical chops on many level (hardware, systems, OS, and web dev).

Ah ok - "if you're not the target customer, no need to explain the product to you". Great mantra to live life by! You don't happen to work in marketing, do you?

Why is everything a "product"? Why does everything have to be marketed? Why does there have to be a need for something, for it to be built and to be noteworthy?

This looks like a cool personal project, built by the author as a learning experience, with a convenient API to manipulate the machine that's being simulated. If that doesn't tell you enough about why it exists, then I don't know what to tell you besides "nothing to see here".

Re: V86 – An x86-compatible CPU and hardware emulator

#38

Post by khedoros »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #21

It is an interesting piece of software, but what is the purpose? For someone that wants to emulate a Pentium computer there are many better ways, for having fun there are many better ways, so what is left for this particular one?

> for having fun there are many better ways

There's no accounting for taste. Building something like this sounds a lot more fun to me than most programming projects that I hear other people talk about as "fun". What would you have chosen to do instead?

Re: V86 – An x86-compatible CPU and hardware emulator

#39

Post by khedoros »

frutiger wrote: post #22
AdrianB1 wrote: post #21

It is an interesting piece of software, but what is the purpose? For someone that wants to emulate a Pentium computer there are many better ways, for having fun there are many better ways, so what is left for this particular one?

Why must everything have a purpose?

I've got a lot of side projects like this one. The programming I do at work has a solid purpose. It's relaxing to work on something that isn't strictly necessary, as long as it satisfies my curiosity.

I like reading through disassemblies of DOS games and figuring out how things work. It's fun recognizing C programming patterns in the assembly. There's something a little charming about looking up what writing to some VGA control register is supposed to do...and I haven't found anyone else who actually thought any of that sounded like fun.

Someday, I'll put together a series of blog posts about it, and maybe I'll have some code that I actually want to show off, but right now I'm just having fun.

Re: V86 – An x86-compatible CPU and hardware emulator

#40

Post by johnhenry »

kelvin0 wrote: post #29
johnhenry wrote: post #16

Really cool, but perhaps the title should indicate that this is an emulator that works in the browser? Perhaps a short description at the top of the readme before the demos?

Also, minimum HD requirements to run this. Otherwise, all my Firefox windows went 'Han Solo' on me ... But I think this is an awesome project, author must have learned quite a bit getting this running!

Pardon, I am unfamiliar with what it means to go "Han Solo"? Could you elaborate?
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