Emulators and hypervisors; Update: 13/10/2018

[Battler]

The purpose of this thread is listing the emulators and/or hypervisors for running old software, as well as discussing them.

• For more modern software, such as Windows XP and onwards, it is really recommended to use VMWare, VirtualBox, QEMU, or Virtual PC/Hyper-V, as they are designed to run more modern software;
  
  It is, however, not recommended to use them for running software older than Windows XP. While it may work, some software may experience multiple issues due to being run on hypervisors (one reason could be that the clock speed of your PC is too high), which leaves no other option but to use an emulated CPU & BIOS.
  
  This is a list:
  • Oracle VM VirtualBox: It is free and open-source, and can run pretty much anything form Windows XP onwards. However, caution should be taken when running pre-release software on it as the BIOS date/time is hard to change, though software exists for that.
    Offical site: https://www.virtualbox.org/ .
  • VMWare: It is commercial, but makes some things easier, such as changing BIOS date/time, which makes it more suitable for modern pre-release software.
    Official site: http://www.vmware.com/ .
  • Parallels Workstation: Much like VMWare, but for Mac OS X only. Windows version existed but was discontinued in 2013.
    Official site: http://www.parallels.com/eu/ .
  • Microsoft Hyper-V: It is built into modern versions of Windows, and is therefore the easiest to obtain. Not available for Linux or OS X.
    Official site: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server- ... ation.aspx .
  • Windows Virtual PC: Same as Hyper-V, but only works in Windows 7, so if you have a newer version of Windows, or are on Linux or OS X, then it is not for you.
    Official site: http://www.microsoft.com/ .
  • Microsoft Virtual PC 2007: Same as the above, but the 64-bit edition works all the way from Vista to 8.1, while the 32-bit edition works all the way from Windows 2000 to 10. Requires the VMM.SYS from the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK to properly work on Windows 8 and later, and does not work at all on Windows 10 x64.
    Official site: http://www.microsoft.com/ .
  • QEMU: Free and open-source, as well as multi-platform. Runs Windows XP and most Linux versions well. Also emulates non-x86 architectures, and can function as a hypervisor too, using KVM.
    Official site: http://wiki.qemu.org/Main_Page .
  • bochs: Free and open-source, but slow (especially the video emulation is slow!), emulates mostly modern hardware, but more limitedly also older hardware.
    Official site: http://bochs.sourceforge.net/ .
• For software, older than Windows XP, these are recommended:
  • 86Box
    A fork of PCem and better than PCem. Emulates more machines than PCem, in addition to SCSI controllers and network cards.
    Official home page: https://86box.github.io/ .
    Official build site: http://ci.86box.net/ .
    Build environment: http://tinyurl.com/pcemude [MingW/MSys2/GCC 6.1].
    86Box Manager (official configuration manager, developed by Overdoze): https://tinyurl.com/86bmgr .
  • PCem: The very best of PC emulators. Emulates a wide range of PC's, graphics cards, CPU's, sound cards, etc. Ideal for most old software.
    Official site: http://pcem-emulator.co.uk/ .
  • DOSBox: A very good emulator, that however has its shortcomings, such as lack of proper FDC emulation.
    Official site: http://www.dosbox.com/ .
    Ykhwong SVN branch: http://ykhwong.x-y.net/ .
    DOSBox-X branch by TheGreatCodeholio: http://dosbox-x.com/ .
  • PCE: Probably the second best emulator, after PCem, though it has much better support for copy-protected floppies.
    Official site: http://www.hampa.ch/pce/ .
  • SPC/AT: Russian closed-source emulator.
    Official site: http://soviet-pc.narod.ru/ .
  • MAME: Generally an arcade emulator, but MESS has been merged in, which has some PC/AT drivers, which however work very badly for time being.
    Official site: http://mamedev.org/ .
  • Berapa: An emulator by reenigne (of 8088MPH fame) that aims to provide cycle-exact emulation of the 8088 @ 4.77 MHz. Currently in very early state of development but looks very promising.
    Official site: https://github.com/reenigne/reenigne/tree/master/berapa .
• In addition, these are the emulators that emulator machines of the NEC PC-98 series:
  • Neko Project II: Probably the best of them. Even has an official branch that emulates PC-9821 machines as opposed to PC-9801 that the main branch emulates. Free and open-source.
    Official site: http://www.yui.ne.jp/np2/ .
    NP21/Win site: https://sites.google.com/site/np21win/ . Recommended and currently best maintained branch, can even run Windows 2000 for PC-98.
    FMGen branch: http://www.mediafire.com/?6o8ouea8w990b54 (emulator) and http://www.mediafire.com/?cja10ogt54tp2j2 (FMGen DLL set).
    Kai branch: http://www.mediafire.com/?8ocxm18v698b4c6 (NP2), http://www.mediafire.com/?2m88p1prpg1px84 (NP21 0.83), http://www.mediafire.com/?ry6su3n8nac39s5 (NP21 0.85), http://www.mediafire.com/?t63sikgag5n2jkx (branch of the Kai branch).
    XNP2 branch: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~aw9k-nnk/np2/ (also offered for Linux).
    0.83+R4 branch: http://www.vesta.dti.ne.jp/~tsato/soft_s98v3.html .
  • T98-Next: Second-best PC-98 emulation. Development resumed in 2010 after 8 years of hiatus.
    Official site: http://akiyuki.boy.jp/t98next/ .
    Download: http://www.sendspace.com/file/k9xauw .
    Old official site: http://www.geocities.jp/t98next/index.html .
  • Anex86: The very first PC-98 emulator, and probably the only one capable of running Windows NT for PC-98. Development has stopped, however.
    Download page mirror: http://motor.geocities.jp/aqua_marine_b ... axdown.htm .
  • Emulators by Takeda Toshiya: Three of them are written compeltely from scratch (ePC-9801, ePC-9801E, ePC-98DO), while the last (QEMU/9821) is a modification of QEMU that needs the PC-9801BX4 ROM's (available on the Internet and linked in a thread here on BetaArchive too).
    Official site: http://homepage3.nifty.com/takeda-toshiya/ .
• The following are emulators of Apple Macintosh and NeXT machines (credit for this part of the list goes to AlphaBeta):
  • Basilisk II: Emulates the later 68k based Macintosh computer. The last Mac OS version to run on this emulator is version 8.1.
    Official site: http://basilisk.cebix.net/ .
  • SheepShaver: An emulator of early PowerPC based Macs. It can run various versions from the very first Mac OS versions for PowerPC Macs through version 9.0.4.
    Official site: http://sheepshaver.cebix.net/ .
  • PearPC: A PowerPC emulator capable of running the various operating systems designed for the platform, including Mac OS X and Linux.
    Official site: http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/ .
  • Mini vMac: A very minimal (as implied by the name) emulator of the early models of the Apple Macintosh.
    Official site: http://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/ .
  • Previous: Aims to emulate a NeXT Cube or a NeXT Station with all its peripherals.
    Official site: http://previous.alternative-system.com/ .

This is I think all. For any updates, post here or PM me, and I am going to update my thread.

[TheCollector1988]

Might add that MAME/MESS is improving (albeit somewhat) PC-98 emulation in recent months but still far from complete and far from competing with Neko Project II/21.

[pool7]

I'm not entirely sure which platforms/architectures you want to include in the list, but I'll thow this out here anyway:
Hercules (Mainframe emulator, emulates at least the following architectures: S/370, S/390, ESA, zArchitecture)

[louisw3]

Simh. https://github.com/simh/simh

For all you ancient midrange emulation. The best ones are the pdp11, vax and z80. Run ancient unix, bsd, vms and cp/m among others.

[Darkstar]

PCjs is very good at emulating old IBM PC and some newer machines, it offers limited emulated hardware but the quality of emulation is very high

[James]

I would be weary of Basilisk II and SheepShaver; both are very dated emulators that haven't had much in the way of core overhaul since the early 00s; they're more vaporware than anything by now.

[voidp]

The future of VMware Workstation may be in doubt.

VMware downsized last week and apparently laid off the Workstation and Fusion teams.

The entire workstation team is gone and they are moving things to China, without a knowledge transfer.

https://communities.vmware.com/thread/529317

Work (including engineering work) on VMware Workstation desktop virtualization and VMware Fusion is being sent offshore.

http://fortune.com/2016/01/26/vmware-layoffs-hit/

...the Hosted UI team, responsible for VMware’s Workstation and Fusion products, woke up to find themselves out of a job. These products ... are probably not long for this world.

http://blog.chipx86.com/2016/01/26/a-tr ... hosted-ui/

[Goldfish64]

Is it worth mentioning the various versions of Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac?

[MSUser2013]

Is it worth mentioning the various versions of Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac?

Depends on how many users of this site are interested in PowerPC Macs, Since the Mac versions of Virtual PC are only compatible with PowerPC, Since it emulates x86 on PPC, It may be appropriate to categorize it as an emulator. The issue is that the Mac versions were never free, They were commercially available, So to get it legally, You'd have to go on eBay or Amazon.

Also the whole "Hypervisors should only be used with Windows XP or newer" theory depends on your hardware, For me, A Core 2 can hypervise Windows 2000 just fine, While it may not run that great on a Core i3/i5/i7.

[Goldfish64]

Is it worth mentioning the various versions of Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac?

Depends on how many users of this site are interested in PowerPC Macs, Since the Mac versions of Virtual PC are only compatible with PowerPC, Since it emulates x86 on PPC, It may be appropriate to categorize it as an emulator. The issue is that the Mac versions were never free, They were commercially available, So to get it legally, You'd have to go on eBay or Amazon.

Also the whole "Hypervisors should only be used with Windows XP or newer" theory depends on your hardware, For me, A Core 2 can hypervise Windows 2000 just fine, While it may not run that great on a Core i3/i5/i7.

I have a copy of VPC6 from Dreamspark, but have never got a chance to try it out. Like you said, it is an emulator, so the speed you get will entirely depend on the host speed. Running anything higher than Windows 2000 is asking too much.

As far as hypervisors go, NT4 and up seems to work pretty well in VMware Workstation 11 on an i7, with sound and everything. For older versions of NT and Windows 9x and other DOS-based versions of Windows, I would go the emulator route. An OS like NT3.1 will run using virtualization, but it will be a poor experience if there are no guest additions.

If someone has a PPC Mac, I guess the only options for running Windows are VPC, QEMU, or Bochs.

[MrFreeman]

I would be weary of Basilisk II and SheepShaver; both are very dated emulators that haven't had much in the way of core overhaul since the early 00s; they're more vaporware than anything by now.

E-maculation has more modern enhanced builds.

Also can VPC 2004 be added for DOS and older windows versions?

EDIT: Your link to Previous points to the wrong site

[badmoon]

E-maculation has more modern enhanced builds.

True, but the current maintainer is only making bugfixes and occasionally implementing a trivial feature. The core code hasn't changed in a very long time.

Don't get me wrong: I'm really happy that someone is maintaining the code and making fresh builds. It would be misleading, though, to say that SheepShaver or BasiliskII are being actively developed.

[James]

Yeah, I'd be very hard-pressed to say that there's really any actively developed Macintosh emulator out there -- I think Mini vMac is honestly the only one left -- ever since Macs transitioned to Intel, nobody's wanted to really work on them anymore.

PearPC had an update from the original developers a few months ago to 0.6pre, but it's still as buggy and as useless as ever; I mean, don't get me wrong -- it's kind of hard to create a properly-paced emulator for such an advanced processor on modern x86 hardware -- but I still think optimization is lacking no matter how you cut it.

Basilisk II and SheepShaver get frequent bugfixes (not proper updates and improvements) every so often, but it's still buggy, uses an antiquated SDL library, and is generally not what I'd call a stable and usable emulator.

Mini vMac seems pretty competent, but it's still very feature limited; it only really emulates the original AIO beige Macs from the 80s -- the guy who develops it has rough/early Mac II emulation, but very feature limited, as I've said.

Too bad nobody wants to develop emulators for this stuff anymore, they're interesting machines and worth a proper look at. *shrug*

[ThePagel]

Will any of the PowerPC emulators run the early BeOS releases? I do not have a way to test right now and am curious if anyone has tried.

[anormal]

PCEM is now updated to v11

[DJ Deedahx]

PearPC had an update from the original developers a few months ago to 0.6pre, but it's still as buggy and as useless as ever; I mean, don't get me wrong -- it's kind of hard to create a properly-paced emulator for such an advanced processor on modern x86 hardware -- but I still think optimization is lacking no matter how you cut it.

That's not even the main problem of PearPC to begin with... It will NOT run anything lower than OS X 10.1 Puma, and NOT run anything higher OS 10.4.xx Tiger. In that case, anyone who would be serious about exploring Mac OS 7.6.1 and above would maybe need to buy the actual hardware (and upgrade it if needed), which is putting in quite a lot of money into what some would consider a trivial project. Even then, one may need some specific hardware to emulate specific Mac beta builds (Rhapsody, etc) so finding the hardware needed to run it will be an extra challenge to anyone.

[haroldas.velioniskis]

Simics emulates full x86, IA-64, Alpha, AMD64, MIPS, PowerPC, Sparc systems

[Darkstar]

Just a small correction: "VMware" is the company name. Their hypervisor products are called "Workstation", "Player" and "Fusion" (or "vSphere Hypervisor", for the bare-metal, commercial one that was once called "ESX" and is also free-as-in-beer as long as you don't require the more advanced features)

Also, VirtualPC is not "the same as Hyper-V" since it is a Type-2 hypervisor whereas Hyper-V is a Type-1. HyperV is more similar to Xen (with Dom0 and DomU separation) than to VirtualPC

[Kenneth]

Qemu supports Mac OS 9 and OS X on PowerPC.

[fabriciotm]

Other good emulator is GXemul. Can emulate the ARM, MIPS, Motorola 88K, PowerPC, and SuperH architetures.

[vbdasc]

I'd like to mention the free emulators TME (http://people.csail.mit.edu/fredette/tme/) which can emulate various old Sun machines, based on m68k and SPARC, as well as SKI (http://ski.sourceforge.net), priceless for all the Itanium fanboys here

[tristanleboss]

The "Previous" link is incorrect: it points to this topic

[Battler]

I updated the post, it now mentions 86Box, and also points to the new location for 86Box builds: http://ci.86box.net .

[pool7]

I suggested earlier the inclusion of Hercules; not sure if it was overlooked or simply ignored as the OP never specified the scope.
So I'll go ahead and suggest it again, along with Amiga emulators:

IBM Mainframe (S/370, S/390, ESA, zArchitecture)
Hercules
Official site: http://www.hercules-390.org/
Hercules Spinhawk
Official site: https://github.com/rbowler/spinhawk
Hercules Hyperion
Official site: http://www.softdevlabs.com/hyperion.html

Amiga
FS-UAE
Official site: https://fs-uae.net
WinUAE
Official site: http://www.winuae.net/
Scripted Amiga Emulator (SAE)
Official site: http://scriptedamigaemulator.net/
WinFellow
Official site: http://fellow.sourceforge.net/
XFellow
Official site: http://xfellow.sourceforge.net/

[Darkstar]

While we're at it, I'll mention again the two factual errors I already pointed out earlier (Hyper-V is not the same as VirtualPC, and the VMware product you mean is VMware Workstaton and/or VMware Player, it was never called just "VMware)

Also I think you should include louisw3's suggestion of SimH as emulator for (at least) the Altair 8080, the DEC VAX family, and the DEC PDP family of computers (it emulates others but these are probably the most popular)