Interesting read on a NEW dos emulator. Article in FreeBSD magazine.

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https://bsdmag.org/download/real-time-distributed-messaging-freebsd-nsq/

86Box

86Box is a brand new system emulator that aims to be cycle-exact. This means, to execute any operation as fast or as slow as if it was being executed on the system it emulates, contrary to what VirtualBox and DOSBox, which emulate things as fast as they can (or within a certain limit), something that may confuse some older software. It is under active development.

Its biggest disadvantage is that it requires a powerful computer to be fast. Its most significant advantage is its compatibility, for which it has no rival. Hardware-wise, it emulates more than 60 different motherboards, up to the level of being able to run their BIOS completely, with the ability to specify what CPU to connect with it (Cyrix, IDT, AMD or Intel). It emulates not only the same cards as DOSBox, but it adds more than 20 VESA SuperVGA variations, including their VBE features and limitations. Soundwise, it emulates all the Sound Blaster models from the first one up to the AWE32, even the Creative Music Blaster is emulated. Also emulated are Sound Blaster PCI, Ensoniq ES1371, Adlib, Gravis
Ultrasound and Windows Sound System. Add to this 30 full MIDI emulation as well as a complete Roland MT-32 emulation.

Figure 3.

Shadow Warrior running on 86Box

Other emulated devices are the ubiquitously supported NE2000 network card; Adaptec, BusLogic, and NCR SCSI cards. It also can emulate IDE, ESDI and ST-506 hard disks, as well as all kind of floppy drives and CD drives.

Like VirtualBox, it also requires a real operating system, and you can install any operating system that was supported on the machine you configure in it. Configuration, in general, is easier to do than on DOSBox because of 86Box’s integrated configuration interface. The only major issue that 86Box presents is that a BSD or Linux compatible version is undergoing development. Therefore, you will need WINE to run it, and because it is actively developed, there is not a single stable version to pick up. If you have FreeBSD, you can install WINE from its repository following the instructions at

https://wiki.winehq.org/FreeBSD

. Not long after the publication of this article, you will be able to test a native BSD version of 86Box.

Figure 4.

86Box beta running on FreeBSD Thankfully, you can go to 86Box’s IRC channel,

#softhistory at irc://irc.rol.im to get help from the developers.

You can get 86Box from

https://github.com/Obattler/86Box.

You need to get both the executable package and the roms package and put them in the same folder, say, /usr/local/86Box.

Once you have 86Box extracted to a folder, you can specify a command line argument to load an emulated system configuration for a specific folder. If you decide, for example, to store all your configuration folders inside a folder called 86VMs in your home folder, you can put a script like the following one, in one of the folders in PATH (e.g./usr/local/bin), and just invoke it using your configuration folder name as the argument:

Example script:
#!/bin/bash
`which wine` /usr/local/86Box.exe
--vmpath ~/86VMs/"$1"

So you can put the script as
/usr/local/bin/86box.

Thereafter, create an empty folder at
~/86VMs/Games.

You can just run 86Box Games in any terminal to configure that folder as a new emulated system for the first time.

--More at site--
https://bsdmag.org/download/real-time-distributed-messaging-freebsd-nsq/