The new major release is finally here! 🥳
If you want to read more, make sure to check out @richardg867's blog post dedicated to the new release on our new website!
Changes
This is a brief list of changes made since the last stable release, 86Box v2.07.
- New logo and icons!
- User interface
- Localization support (#1790)
- Media menu in the main menu bar (#712)
- Customizable icon sets (#1817)
- Nicer messages boxes using the Vista+ TaskDialog interface (#824)
- HiDPI support (#992)
- Discord Rich Presence support (#484)
- OpenGL renderer with shader support (#1382)
- Machines and CPU are now sorted into categories
- Options to resize the window to a specified size and to lock the window size were added
- Plug and
PrayPlay- Support for legacy ISA Plug and Play was introduced (#1316)
- The following ISA PnP devices are supported:
- Sound cards
- Creative Sound Blaster 16 PnP
- Creative Sound Blaster AWE32 PnP
- Crystal CS4236B
- Network cards
- AMD PCnet-ISA+
- Realtek RTL8019AS
- Sound cards
- SMBus and I2C emulation was introduced, allowing the emulator to report the presence of 86Box-branded memory sticks and video displays (#1110)
- ACPI
- ACPI support was added for select Socket 7 and newer machines
- Windows Vista and Windows 7 can now (somewhat) run as guests under 86Box!
- CPUs
- Intel Pentium Pro, Pentium II and Celeron emulation was added together with adequate Socket 8, Slot1/2 and Socket 370 machines
- VIA Cyrix III emulation has also been added for Socket 370 and Slot 1 machines
- AMD K6, K6-2, K6-III and IDT WinChip 2 were added for (Super) Socket 7
- IBM 386SLC, 486SLC and 486BL emulation has been added for PS/2 machines (#502)
- STPC series of x86-based SoCs has been added (#905)
- Chipsets
- Overhauled the emulation of i430-series and introduced i440-series chipsets
- VIA Apollo series chipsets have been introduced, including the MVP3 chipset
- Video
- Added or overhauled video adapters
- Added 3dfx Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo3 (port from PCem)
- Added S3 86C924, 86C928, Vision868, VIsion968, Trio64V+, Trio64V2 and Trio3D/2X
- Added Trident TGUI 9600XGi and 9680XGi; overhauled emulation of 9400CXi and 9440AGi
- Added Kasan Hangulmadang-16 Korean VGA (based on Tseng ET4000)
- Overhauled emulation of G2 GC205 and Headland HT216-32; added the SVGA Multiview
- Added the CL-GD5401
- Added the Schetmash Iskra EGA
- Numerous driver-specific bugs on existing cards have been fixed
- Basic AGP support has been added (#1303)
- Added or overhauled video adapters
- Networking
- The AMD PCnet-FAST III, PCnet-PCI II and PCnet-ISA+ adapters have been added, based on their emulation in VirtualBox
- The Realtek RTL8019AS adapter has been added
- SCSI
- The option to use up to four SCSI adapters in one configuration has been added.
- Added emulation of the AMD Am53C974 PCscsi controller, based on QEMU's emulation
- Added the NCR 53C815, 53C820, 53C860 and 53C875 SCSI controllers
- Sound
- New hardware
- Rewrites and improvements
- PIT and PIC emulation was rewritten to fix several outstanding bugs with older software such as Microsoft Word 1.0 for DOS and MR BIOS
- Memory framework was reworked to support features required by newly-added CPUs
- Network emulation performance and stability have been improved
Documentation
Documentation for this release is available at 86box.readthedocs.io (available from the emulator's Help menu). We happily accept pull requests to expand the documentation in the 86Box/docs repository!
Acknowledgements
Sincere thanks to @OBattler, @richardg867, @TC1995, @nerd73, @lemondrops, @dhrdlicka and others who have contributed towards this release.
Translations
The following people have contributed translations of the user interface:
- 🇨🇳 Chinese (Simplified): @startmenu
- 🇭🇷 Croatian: @dob205
- 🇨🇿 Czech: @dhrdlicka
- 🇩🇪 German: @dob205
- 🇬🇧 English (United Kingdom): @jriwanek
- 🇪🇸 Spanish (Spain): mgtroyas
- 🇫🇮 Finnish: @ts-korhonen
- 🇫🇷 French: @jvernet
- 🇭🇺 Hungarian: @laciba96
- 🇮🇹 Italian: explorerexe
- 🇯🇵 Japanese: @OBattler
- 🇧🇷 Portuguese (Brazil): @altiereslima
- 🇵🇹 Portuguese (Portugal): @OBattler, DoutorHouse
- 🇷🇺 Russian: @OBattler
- 🇸🇮 Slovenian: @daviunic
- 🇹🇷 Turkish: luennix
Prerequisites
86Box requires ROM files in order to operate, which can be downloaded from the 86Box/roms repository. The roms directory should be in the same location as 86Box.exe.
Which ZIP should I download?
86Boxis the standard build. Download this if you don't know which one to choose.86Box-Debugincludes debug symbols. If you don't need them, you generally don't need to use this build.
Please note the Optimized builds have been discontinued, please use the regular build.