BasicBox: A full 486-class x86 PC emulator written in Visual Basic 6

[miker00lz]

GitHub link: https://github.com/mikechambers84/BasicBox

I made a full 486-class PC emulator in VB6! I mainly have been writing this in C, but I've also been doing a VB6 port as a side project just as a proof of concept that you can write just about anything in VB6 as long as you don't care how slow it is!

It runs Linux, Windows NT 4.0 and DOS. Unfortunately, Win95/98 don't work in it yet for some reason. I'm trying to figure out the issue. Windows 2000 won't boot either, only NT 4.

NT 4 also doesn't like something about my IDE controller right now, so it has to be booted as a SCSI Disk.

Old Linux distros like Debian 2.2 Potato are usable if you're running this on a modern CPU with high IPC and clock speed.

There are two sample hard disk images available over in the releases section on the GitHub, there's FreeDOS 1.4 and Debian 2.2. Couldn't include NT 4 obviously, since that's technically illegal even though it's ancient.

Root password for the Potato sample is "basicbox"

Notes from the readme:

Usage notes:

• BasicBox currently requires you to configure the guest machine from the command line. Launch with -h for a list of options. I plan to have a GUI configuration utility soon.
• Click in the window or press Ctrl-F11 to "grab" the mouse. Ctrl-F11 releases the grab.
• Ctrl-F12 injects a Ctrl-Alt-Delete sequence to the guest OS.
• Windows NT 4.0 doesn't like my IDE controller, it blue screens during startup unless using a SCSI hard disk. DOS and Linux seem to work fine with IDE.
• There is a "-video et4000" option but it's buggy and has issues, so I don't recommend using it yet. Stick with the default "stdvga" card for now.
• It uses a real 486 era BIOS, so just like back in the day you need to configure IDE disks in BIOS setup.
• Have a lot of patience.
• Emulated NE2000 is at IO port 0x300, IRQ 7. (If enabled)
• Emulated BusLogic SCSI default IO port is 0x334. (If enabled)
• Emulated Sound Blaster is at IO port 0x220, IRQ 5, DMA 1.
• To configure an empty-on-boot SCSI CD drive, for example on SCSI ID 1, use: "-scsi-cd 1 ." then you can change ISOs on the fly from the UI.

Features

• 486 CPU (plus a few extra instructions... let's just call it an "enhanced 486" for now)
• 387-class FPU (ported from Tiny386)
• ATA/IDE controller
• BusLogic BT-545S SCSI controller with both hard disk and CD ISO support (ported from 86Box)
• Floppy controller (A bit broken, works in DOS. Linux and NT 4 don't really like it.)
• VGA graphics
• Microsoft-compatible serial mouse
• NE2000 network card (ported from Bochs) -- requires winpcap/npcap to be installed.
• Sound Blaster (my implementation) + OPL3 (NukedOPL ported to VB6)

To do:

• SPEED OPTIMIZATION! As much as possible at least.
• Get Windows 2000 and 9x working.
• Fix IDE issues.
• Finish user-mode networking module so pcap isn't required.
• Get ET4000 working correctly.
• Some GUI config tool.
• Fix various other bugs
• Clean up some very ugly stuff in the code

Screenshots: