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Emulators for x86 PCs MS DOS
Many programs hosted on Defacto2 are for MS-DOS (MicroSoft Disk Operating System), the x86 PC platform that predates Microsoft Windows.
DOSBox is the quintessential and most popular DOS emulator that runs on various platforms. The software is designed for 2D graphic gaming and easy configuration over historical accuracy. Development of DOSBox has long since stagnated, so here are some maintained and compatible replacements.
DOSBox Staging is a modern continuation of DOSBox with advanced features and current development practices. It is meant as a (mostly) drop-in replacement for older DOSBox versions—your existing configurations will continue to work, but you will have access to many advanced features. Because DOSBox Staging comes with sensible defaults, you’ll need to write a lot less configuration than with older DOSBox versions. Most games and application software require no tweaking and will work fine with the stock settings. However, the extensive configuration options and advanced features are available if you wish to dwelve deeper.
DOSBox-X is an open-source DOS emulator for running DOS applications and games. DOS-based Windows such as Windows 3.x and Windows 9x are officially supported. Compared to DOSBox, DOSBox-X is much more flexible and provides more features. We also hope that DOSBox-X (along with DOSLIB) can aid in new DOS development.
PCem is a complicated but far more historically accurate x86 emulator. While DOSBox emulates the MS-DOS operating system for gaming, PCem is operating system agnostic and instead emulates the PC platform, including authentic hardware, BIOS, CPU, graphics, and audio. It means you can attempt to install any operating system on the emulated machine. But the downside is you must deal with all the awkward and confusing BIOS, driver, IRQ configurations, and installation issues common with 1980-1990s x86 PC computing.
https://github.com/sarah-walker-pcem/pcem/
Despite the similarities I use 86Box and 86BoxManager over PCem due to the ease of use.
https://github.com/86Box/86Box
86Box is an IBM PC system emulator that specializes in running old operating systems and software designed for IBM PC systems and compatibles from 1981 through fairly recent system designs based on the PCI bus.
86Box and PCem are both PC system emulators. In fact, 86Box originally started out as a fork of PCem in 2016. However, the codebases of both emulators have since then diverted by a lot. Because of this, features and bugs found in one emulator do not necessarily have to be present in the other. In general, 86Box focuses more on the accuracy of emulation, especially for older 8088/8086 based systems. This makes it more compatible with older applications, games and demos that make use of clever hardware tricks to make do with the limited computing power of the time. Meanwhile, PCem often takes various shortcuts to improve performance at the cost of accuracy, which does end up limiting the selection of software it can run.