npm:v86 | Skypack

README

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 generic VGA card 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.
A SoundBlaster 16 sound card.

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.
- Tinycore (3.16, 4.8 kernel): Works.
- Nanolinux works.
- Archlinux works with some caveats. See archlinux.md.
- Damn Small Linux (2.4 Kernel): Doesn't work.
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, 3, 95 and 98 work. Windows XP is unstable, but can work with some tweaks (see this issue). Other versions might work but haven't been tested.
Many hobby operating systems work.
FreeBSD works.
OS/2 doesn't work.

You can get some infos on the disk images here: https://github.com/copy/images. The Windows images are from WinWorld.

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

Source code and most tests: Simplified BSD License, see LICENSE.
QEMU test suite: See tests/qemu/LICENSE.

Credits

CPU test cases via QEMU, http://wiki.qemu.org/Main_Page
More tests via kvm-unit-tests
Disk Images
The jor1k project for 9p, filesystem and uart drivers
WinWorld sources of some old operating systems

Author

Fabian Hemmer (http://copy.sh/, copy@copy.sh)

v86

Usage no npm install needed!