Show HN: My x86 emulator written in JavaScript

by g3 • 13 years ago

765 190 13 years ago

Pretty awesome, I for one don't think the constant stream of "x, rewritten completely in javascript" is tiring (this is not meant to be sarcastic).

[EDIT] - This post doesn't seem to say enough when I look back at it. Wanted to add this:

Seeing posts like this really excites me (and inspires me) about the future of web programming, and programming in general. Anyone that's excited about programming has to get excited about abstraction, and it doesn't get much more abstract that cross-coded/implemented virtualized systems like this. Even if you hate javascript.

Every step people take in blurring lines between systems like this should be exciting, given the large amount of abstraction that had to go into creating something like this.

malladye• 13 years ago

how does it work?

samspenc• 13 years ago

Yeah! Especially X - that's a pretty amazing X implementation!

tjdetwiler• 13 years ago

It's not an X implementation, it's VESA emulation (disclaimer: this is a guess).

haliphax• 13 years ago

Very, very awesome. Kudos!

staunch• 13 years ago

This may as well be magic as far as I'm concerned. When I first saw http://bellard.org/jslinux/ I just about shat myself. This is definitely another level of awesome. Well done.

ghayes• 13 years ago

This really is extremely well done [and I'd like to see the unminified source]. The next feature I'd want to see is networking support. I love the idea to be able to run my entire dev setup in an emulated browser session [e.g. ruby, rails, redis]. That would be a game changer on how I'd develop.

javanix• 13 years ago

At 2000 kIPS you may have a few generations of javascript engines to go before we get there.

That's not meant to take away from this project - it truly is amazing what can be interpreted in the browser now.

chris_mahan2• 13 years ago

Absolutely. This would be awesome.

RaphiePS• 13 years ago

I think it would be really cool to link this up with some of the Chrome App API's (TCP/UDP networking, serial). Then you could distribute lightweight programs without bothering with Emscripten or Native Client.

rrrene• 13 years ago

That would be a game changer on how I'd develop.

Why? I'm honestly curious since I can't imagine any big advantages over more "classic" setups ...

stonewhite• 13 years ago

Must plug http://www.koding.com here.

It is a "social" development platform supporting rails, mysql etc.

benjamincburns2• 13 years ago

I'm presently working on networking (OpenCores ethmac) support for the jor1k[1] OpenRisc emulator. The plan is to push ethernet frames out over a web socket, and pipe them into a tun interface on the server via a node/python/C/whatever backend. From there, do whatever you want using your OS' standard networking tools (if you have specific needs for the server-side of this which go beyond using your os' standard tools, please let me know).

If you're interested in this, please do make plenty of noise at me to finish. I've got a flight back to the East coast from Portland on Sunday, so I'm hoping I can get most of the browser code finished by then. After that I'm going to be somewhat distracted through the end of January, as I'm moving from Charleston, SC to Christchurch, New Zealand. I could use a bit of motivation to get this done.

1: http://s-macke.github.io/jor1k/

benatkin• 13 years ago

Or PHP.

Ruby's interestingness to performance ratio is not high.

_ak• 13 years ago

With emscripten, anything is possible nowadays. And it blows your mind.

facorreia• 13 years ago

Anything has been possible since 1999. Anything at all.

http://www.zombo.com

chubot• 13 years ago

Wait how does this differ from JSLinux? Aren't they doing the same thing?

Also, this isn't just an x86 emulator, right? If it can boot linux, it's emulating the entire PC platform, not just x86. Very impressive of course. But I am interested in a comparison vs jslinux (also not open source).

g316• 13 years ago

Yes, it's very similar to the jslinux project. However, I added more hardware (it can boot a real bios: seabios). Also, I'll make this open source.

acqq• 13 years ago

I just ran Bellard's JSLinux (#) on my retina iPad with iOS 7. It works! Booting took 15 sec. Claims 20 bogoMips. And I can type the commands in it and execute them:

First I tap to the edit box on the right, the keyboard rolls in, then I tap in the "console." The commands work. I just don't know how I'd type ctrl-Keys without the physical keyboard.

Copy.sh ends with unimplemented GP handler however for anything I've tried.

#) JSLinux: the PC emulator is written in Javascript with the emulated hardware: 32 bit x86 compatible CPU, 8259 Programmble Interrupt Controller, 8254 Programmble Interrupt Timer, 16450 UART, Real Time Clock, IDE interface and hard disk. http://bellard.org/jslinux/tech.html

dman2• 13 years ago

Is there a non minified version of the javascript emulator file that is publicly available?

g316• 13 years ago

I'll put it online soon. I haven't figured licensing out yet and need to write some technical notes

dman2• 13 years ago

Awesome - congrats on a very impressive hack.

ElDiablo666• 13 years ago

I would like you to consider GPLv3+. Thanks and congrats on amazing work!

pgeorgi• 13 years ago

I'd love to be able to use this to host a coreboot showcase. Open Source licensing would certainly help there.

... Since you're using seabios, I guess its bringup is relatively close to qemu's?

klepra• 13 years ago

That's awesome, I quit! :)

tharshan09• 13 years ago

Could you give some tips or links on how to go about emulating an architecture? I would like to know how to go about emulating an architecture much less complicated like PIC.

McGlockenshire2• 13 years ago

This is awesome.

You might want to consider re-ordering the font list in the console though. Consolas isn't perfectly fixed-width apparently, and it made Rogue rather puzzling to play.

sillysaurus2• 13 years ago

Consoles isn't perfectly fixed width? That sucks. Till now it was my go-to fixed width font.

I assumed something named consolas would be a font suitable for consoles.

Which font do you like to use?

McGlockenshire2• 13 years ago

I use Consolas every day.

I'm on Linux, so that might also impact something.

Perhaps the line drawing characters are extra-small or something? Fire up Rogue and try it out...

mzs4• 13 years ago

I tried the freedos image, says something about 400kips and then down to 0. Nothing ever shows. FF 17.0.9 ESR on 1386 freebsd 8.3

g316• 13 years ago

I'm testing in Firefox 24. If you could tell me what the error console outputs, I'll try to fix it.

mzs4• 13 years ago

Thanks, it's under the error tab:

ReferenceError: requestAnimationFrame is not defined http://copy.sh/v24/v86_all.js Line: 239

zenocon2• 13 years ago

no network interfaces :( boo. rm -rf or halt -f are fun.

this is great work. would love to see source un-minified.

rfnslyr• 13 years ago

Use http://jsbeautifier.org/?

zenocon2• 13 years ago

Yea, Chrome DevTools has a pretty print option too, but if they ran it through something like closure compiler it renames all the vars. Would like to browse source on github or comparable -- also see the history :)

g316• 13 years ago

Networking is on the todo list. I couldn't host the traffic, though.

chii3• 13 years ago

i suppose you could try adding something to do the networking part via webrtc as the channel?

abeiz• 13 years ago

Wow, very impressive! What are your plans for this? Any plans to open source?

g316• 13 years ago

It will be open-source. I don't know how to deal with licensing yet.

Tobu2• 13 years ago

1. Pick a license. You'll probably want something compatible with Qemu (GPL2+).

2. Ship a COPYING file, add a header to your files: https://github.com/osterman/copyright-header

bovermyer• 13 years ago

...wow. Just, wow. You, my friend, are awesome.

JoshTriplett4• 13 years ago

Very impressive.

Interesting bug: I can't seem to type '-', '=', '+', or '_' into the Linux image. Missing '-' in particular makes it hard to run commands with options.

Elaborate workaround:

    /root% eval eq$(dmesg | grep 'e820 update' | sed 's/.*) \(.\).*/\1\1/')
    /root% echo $eq
    =
    /root% eval dash$eq$(uname bad 2>&1 | grep Usage: | sed 's/.*\[\(.\).*/\1/')
    /root% echo $dash
    -
    /root% uname ${dash}a
    Linux (none) 2.6.34.14 #44 Tue Oct 15 20:50:15 CEST 2013 i586 GNU/Linux

The first command grabs an '=' from dmesg and sets "eq" to it (without typing '='), and then the second command grabs a '-' from the usage message of uname and sets "dash" to that (without typing '-'). The last shows how to use ${dash} in a command.

Sheepshow• 13 years ago

This is the most soul-crushing category of bug, the kind which keeps me up all night, drinking.

Build a skyscraper, and lock the keys inside for the ribbon cutting. Sorry pal you lost your funding

Land on Mars, see an alien, but your camera is out of batteries and everybody back on Earth thinks you're a quack.

Successfully perform open-heart surgery on a desert island, but muck up the stitches and cause a scar. Your patient will hold it against you the rest of his life (which you saved).

to3m2• 13 years ago

The soul-crushing bugs are the ones where you run a program, and nothing actually goes actively wrong, but the program overall just doesn't behave quite like it does on the real hardware.

Simple defects where a key is being ignored on certain systems are usually quite easy to fix ;)

shurcooL4• 13 years ago

Luckily, he was able to come up with a workaround.

Here's a soul-crushing situation that doesn't have a workaround, as far as I can tell.

You can play the original Deus Ex on OnLive. By default, it sets the fov to a very low number. It's only possible to change it in the console (there is no UI for it). But the console is disabled. However, you can get around that by pressing T, which creates a mini console with "say " prepoulated. Press delete to erase say, and type "fov 90". So close...

But they disabled the Enter key from working.

So you can get full access to the console, type the command that would fix the FOV, but you're unable to execute it because Enter key does not get sent to the game. You're completely helpless.

g316• 13 years ago

I've found the bug. For now, try Chromium. I'll fix this tomorrow.

JoshTriplett4• 13 years ago

Thanks! What was the bug? I'd be interested.

Also, any plans to implement GPF handling? I tried booting a test environment I have on it (which runs Python as part of the GRUB2 bootloader), but it failed primarily due to lack of support for trapping GPFs. (There are a few other issues I'd have to work around to make it work, but that's a major one that I can't easily work around.)

femto• 13 years ago

I found that bug too. First thing I did was think, "a system restore is a page refresh away and I've always wanted to test the effects of this", then I attempted to type "rm -r /*".

valleyer• 13 years ago

Not `dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/kmem` ?

laumars• 13 years ago

You could just use octal escape sequences in printf:

    printf '\055'

returns

Just change 055 for 075 (=), 053 (+) or 137 (_).

eg your $eq code can be written like this:

    eval eq$(printf '\075\075')

JoshTriplett4• 13 years ago

Good thinking; that is much simpler.

Aardwolf4• 13 years ago

I can type -, +, = and _ from the alpha area of the keyboard, but none of the keys of the numpad works (not even the numbers)

darkstalker• 13 years ago

I can't type "/" or "\" and all the shift-<number> keys combinations are wrong. I'm using an ES layout keyboard on Firefox.

r4pha• 13 years ago

This is beyond awesome! I'd love to read about your thought process while writing it, I guess a lot of people (including myself) would learn a lot from it. How long did it take to write?

g316• 13 years ago

I got Freedos working about 2 years ago, but then stopped working on it. I picked it up again earlier this year. Approximately 3 months of full time work.

I'm considering writing some articles, just need to find some free time.

urs2102• 13 years ago

This is incredible! At this point, it's definitely JS magic, because I'm struggling to fathom how this even exists.

zerr• 13 years ago

I know it is oversimplification, but in essence, isn't writing an emulator just mundane following and reading specs? a lot of specs...

smackfu• 13 years ago

Yes, following the specs will give you a correct emulator.

The trick is in writing a fast and accurate one.

lxe• 13 years ago

You should un-minify and open-source this.

elwell2• 13 years ago

github link?

scosman• 13 years ago

wow

bcoates• 13 years ago

Anyone know what format the floppies are expecting? It won't accept a DOS 6.22 install disk from MSDN, maybe it doesn't like DMF?

Also, swapping disks during the install might be an issue, I don't see a button...

g316• 13 years ago

It expects one of the standard formats (720k, 1440k or 2880k). I'll add switching disks some time in the future.

WalterBright• 13 years ago

It rejected my 360Kb images :-(

swamy_g• 13 years ago

Dude, this is Grade-A stuff.

agilebyte• 13 years ago

  125 kB compressed JS
  262 kB uncompressed JS
  9765 lines of uncompressed JS

Wow.

s-macke6• 13 years ago

g3: Probably you have seen my emulator. http://s-macke.github.io/jor1k/ It does more or less the same, but emulates a different CPU.

Your emulator is impressive and especially fast. I think it took a long time for you to optimize it. I tried to start TinyCore, but it stops after decompressing the kernel. So still some work to do ;)

s-macke6• 13 years ago

I saw the source and I have some tips for you: Avoid the UInt32 Arrays and the >>> operator. They could be transformed by the JIT compiler into doubles and slow everything down. This does not happen with the Int32 Arrays and the >> operator. There is a plug-in called JIT-Inspector which give you this information. Unfortunately it does no longer work in Firefox 24. Firefox 22 was the last working version. Additionally worker threads gave me an incredible speed boost in Firefox. The whole GUI stuff is then separated. Especially the costly canvas update.

kevingadd• 13 years ago

Do you have any documentation to support the stuff about UInt32? The old Firefox JIT had some limitations like this but I'm not aware of anything like that in the current one (which has been shipping for multiple versions). Is it a v8 limitation similar to the 31-bit 'small integer' limitation?

g316• 13 years ago

Hi s-macke. I've read the source code of your emulator before, good job.

I'm aware of the problem with big integers. I'll look into this more closely, thanks for your help.

Regarding workers: I need some restructuring to get this working. I'll also need to figure out the fastest way to exchange the canvas buffer between the worker and the browser.

chris_mahan2• 13 years ago

I'm totally impressed.

aray• 13 years ago

Plan 9 iso [0] CD image fails

    Unimplemented: #GP handler
    Execution stopped

[0] http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/download/

dbancajas• 13 years ago

I want to write an emulator as a learning experience. Any tips how should I start?

JoshTriplett4• 13 years ago

There are two sensible approaches: interpretation or dynamic translation.

If you want to write one as a learning experience for how the platform you're emulating works and how an emulator could work in principle, you probably want to write an interpreter: find out how the platform boots, build something to start reading and interpreting instructions, start adding emulated hardware devices, and you'll get an increasingly functional interpreter.

For a start, you could ignore emulation of devices, and just write a CPU core that interprets instructions.

If you want to learn how modern (but still non-hardware-assisted) emulation works, read about how qemu's dynamic code translator and other JIT compilers work, and build a CPU emulator based on that.

ghewgill• 13 years ago

Canonical place to start: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/448673/how-do-emulators-w...

dave84• 13 years ago

I'm not the OP but check out the book: "The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles" It's quite comprehensive, not exactly about writing an emulator, but it should give you what you need.

joelanders• 13 years ago

https://practicingruby.com/articles/low-level-computing?u=64...

revelation• 13 years ago

You want to write an emulator, but you probably don't want to write one for x86. A nice architecture would be 8 bit AVR microprocessors, for example.

g316• 13 years ago

http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/4732/emulate-an-...

awy2• 13 years ago

I recently posted about emulating the NES with JavaScript.

http://blog.alexanderdickson.com/javascript-nes-emulator-par...

Part 2 will be posted when it's done. :)

If you want to get something done much quicker, have a go at emulating the Chip-8 VM.

I also have a post, but it's less hand-holding than the first.

http://blog.alexanderdickson.com/javascript-chip-8-emulator

Good luck!

vinhboy• 13 years ago

I really like your tutorial. I been trying to learn assembly and your tutorial is really helping me put the big picture together. I hope you continue to work on making it better.

n1ghtmare_• 13 years ago

I'd like to think of myself as an experienced programmer, but I still loved your tutorial ! Brilliant ! Keep up the good work.

michaelmcmillan• 13 years ago

I can't believe this

Aardwolf4• 13 years ago

Would have been fun if it included some interface to execute assembler code on it directly in some way (without booting an OS).

In any case, super awesome! Great work :)

EDIT: Whoa, the dos one has games on it! Can you make Wolf3D work? :)

Pitarou• 13 years ago

I doubt it, but nethack might be worth a shot.

arjn• 13 years ago

Love it and would like to learn more. Are there any docs you could make available ?

bumbledraven• 13 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6221724

   g3 62 days ago | link | parent | on: Show HN: Virtual Machines in the Browser
   Just give me one more month, I'm almost there ...

The last month always takes at least 60 days. Strong work!

hayksaakian• 13 years ago

Cool, I tried the linux gui OS and games worked.

sudoku and snake worked really well, but pong seemed to graphically expensive

eliben• 13 years ago

Cool project. Can you elaborate on the difference between this and JSLinux?

mirsadm• 13 years ago

The amazing thing is it works (slowly) on my Nexus 4. Great work!

batuhanicoz• 13 years ago

This is so cool!

I have one problem with it though, it doesn't seem to support my keyboard. For example when I try "*", it writes "-".

I'm using a Turkish Q keyboard and Chromium on OS X Mavericks GM.

g316• 13 years ago

It should be the US keyboard layout, because that's what the operating systems in the emulator use.

Aardwolf4• 13 years ago

I know keyboard codes in web browsers are a nightmare, but, afaik it is possible to get the intended ascii/unicode character code value of the key, so the emulator could translate that to the US keyboard equivalent to fix this issue.

agumonkey• 13 years ago

waiting for docker.js

sramsay• 13 years ago

Just when you thought "I've written an x in JavaScript" can't get any more insane . . .

Still, this wins the Nobel Prize for awesome.

TeMPOraL• 13 years ago

I'm still waiting for "Show HN: I built a self-modifying general AI in JavaScript".

(@Eliezer, how's the work going? ;))

zzx375• 13 years ago

What else is there to say? Swung for downtown and knocked it into the ocean.

_-_-_-• 13 years ago

@g3 this is super-mega awesome. 3 questions:

1. I know it is already available via the page, but would you please open-source it so others could contribute?

2. Thought I appreciate the apps being shown in the canvas in the resolution they are supposed to use, a full-screen option would be incredible. That way I could play space invaders the way it was meant to be played, in FreeDOS, in a JS emulator, in Firefox, on a mac. (That's just so wrong, it's right.)

3. Is that your real hair? (Sorry, just had to throw in a Real Genius quote.)

tomw1808• 13 years ago

#2 just made my day!

g316• 13 years ago

Fullscreen is there and yes, it will be open source.

cokernel_hacker• 13 years ago

cute.

  /% cat /proc/cpuinfo                                                            
  processor       : 0                                                             
  vendor_id       : GenuineIntel                                                  
  cpu family      : 5                                                             
  model           : 1                                                             
  model name      : Pentium 60/66                                                 
  stepping        : 3                                                             
  cpu MHz         : 1.301                                                         
  cache size      : 256 KB                                                        
  fdiv_bug        : no                                                            
  hlt_bug         : no                                                            
  f00f_bug        : no                                                            
  coma_bug        : no                                                            
  fpu             : yes                                                           
  fpu_exception   : yes                                                           
  cpuid level     : 2                                                             
  wp              : yes                                                           
  flags           : fpu pse tsc cx8 pge cmov                                      
  bogomips        : 2.60                                                          
  clflush size    : 32                                                            
  cache_alignment : 32                                                            
  address sizes   : 32 bits physical, 32 bits virtual                             
  power management:

Heh, 1.3 MHz on a Pentium 60.

pyrrhotech• 13 years ago

Man, shit like this makes me feel dumb. How does this work?

seldo• 13 years ago

Seems very like http://bellard.org/jslinux/ from a while back.

tnhu• 13 years ago

This is a superb work! Beyond my imagination.

jordwalke• 13 years ago

Two things:

1. How can we help? How can I support you? 2. Please open source this.

mambodog3• 13 years ago

If like this you might also be interested in my port of the PCE Emulator to the browser: http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/

At the moment I've only uploaded a demo of the Mac Plus emulator (classic 68k mac) but I'll upload IBM PC and Atari ST demos soon also.

nwh2• 13 years ago

That's very nice too, though aren't you going to be running into some legal issues by distributing their ROMs?

mambodog3• 13 years ago

Potentially, but I feel that the historical significance of these systems and the value of making them available to a newer generation of creators outweighs the technical infringement of copyright. It's basically abandonware, after all.

I feel very strongly about the importance of learning from the past, and not making the same mistakes over and over due to lack of historical perspective. I was particularly inspired by Bret Victor's talk at the DBX conference[1]. That's what motivated me to make this available in the most accessible way possible.

[1] http://worrydream.com/dbx/

mambodog3• 13 years ago

For those who are interested I have uploaded some more demos:

IBM PC with Wolfenstein 3d, Civilization, Monkey Island: http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/ibmpc-games/

IBM PC with Windows 3.0: http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/ibmpc-win/

Mac Plus with applications and games: http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/pce-js-apps/

shurcooL4• 13 years ago

Has anyone had success running this on an iOS device? There are hints of it working on my iPad mini under Chrome, but with Safari it gives a "Unimplemented: #GP handler".

general_failure• 13 years ago

Now and then I see a project which is soul crushing to me when I compare myself with other programmers. This is one of them.

runn1ng• 13 years ago

It actually boots on Chrome.

On Android.

Then it usually dies for low memory - and I can't enter anything at all without keyboard (which doesn't pop up) - but still. The fact that I can boot up a x86 emulator in javascript in browser on ARM mobile phone is crazy.

pcwalton• 13 years ago

Works for me on Firefox for Android, no crashes yet.

mvanotti• 13 years ago

I'm trying to run a custom basic x86 kernel (it was an assignment for my Computer Architecture course). But I can't get it to work =/. (This image works with bochs and in a virtual machine without problems). It seems that it can get to protected mode, enable interruptions, enable paging, but it fails loading the tasks =/

This is the error that I'm getting:

Unimplemented: load system segment descriptor, type = 9 Execution stopped

Here's a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/DdCt8jX.png

tectonic2• 13 years ago

This guy is awesome. Check out a Game of Life Turing Machine: http://copy.sh/life/?pattern=turingmachine

elwell2• 13 years ago

how do you use it to perform a calculation? or what should i be asking?

buremba• 13 years ago

If you add networking support to this amazing project, I think some crazy development environment tools are waiting for us.

cattt• 13 years ago

I can't sleep over the awesomeness of your emulator. I love you and happy birthday <3

Tarang• 13 years ago

I've been waiting ages for this ever since I saw jslinux. This is freaking brilliant.

Looking at the source its been minified. How big is it before that? Are you planning on going open source? Was kind of blown away to see the single js file do all this. Would love to see the method's names to understand how it works

x0054• 13 years ago

This is quite amazing. Could someone post a blog post on the details behind how this works. I am not a JavaScrip programer, and this looks like black magic to me at the moment.

mVChr• 13 years ago

My second computer was an IBM XT 8086. That was the first time I played and fell in love with Rogue. Every time I grab a copy of Rogue nowadays for nostalgia's sake I'm left disappointed because I can never find the version of Rogue that I played as a kid.

My friend, your emulator has that version of Rogue. The kid inside me thanks you greatly.

sambecket• 13 years ago

this is beyond cool... logs off to think in some startup with this :)

etfb3• 13 years ago

When I first saw DOOM running on a bog-standard 386, I declared it to be utter nonsense. I'm no fool! I know what's possible and what's impossible, and that was clearly the latter. Sure, I knew it wasn't impossible, and in fact was true and real and a testament to the brilliance of Carmack et al, but it was still nonsense. Brilliant, astonishing nonsense.

I declare your x86 emulator similar nonsense, for all the same reasons. I take my hat off to you. Well done indeed!

etfb3• 13 years ago

My gods. It runs on my phone. In a web browser. Now, if only I knew how to make the onscreen keyboard pop up...

etfb3• 13 years ago

Hmmm... could you add a simple edit field, <input type="text">, that sent anything typed in it directly to the emulated console? That would make it work on a phone browser.

ck2• 13 years ago

The FreeDOS feels only half the speed of a TRS-80

This is jaw dropping. Imagine next generation javascript.

jbobes• 13 years ago

Very cool!

Btw, this is what I'm working on http://cloud306.com It's kind of similar, but not really.

LionRoar• 13 years ago

A program listing as screensaver (KolibriOS). Now, that is cool.

iso-8859-1• 13 years ago

Here's a list of virtual machines in JavaScript: https://gist.github.com/ysangkok/5606032

api• 13 years ago

I know this sounds like crazy pants, but I would actually use this in the real world if it were a NodeJS module.

Not for anything compute-intensive or serious, but for creating very secure very isolated VMs to run web apps or other services in an insecure environment. It could also be a great way to take a LAMP stack app and rapidly deploy it in certain cases.

Again not for high performance, but for... I can think of a few things personally and I'm sure others can too.

(Though honestly performance wouldn't be that bad...)

Then add the ability to go back and forth between client and server, and virtual networking, and you might have a commercial "virtual DOS LAN with nodes in a browser as a service" startup. What for? Supporting legacy DOS crap: point of sale systems, etc. "Run your legacy DOS stuff in your browser with persistence in the cloud." You'd be surprised how much legacy DOS crap is out there.

g316• 13 years ago

The project is made with both browser and nodejs support in mind. There are still some issues to resolve, but I will definitely release a node version this year.

dancecodes5• 13 years ago

its HTML5 and SSE?

walke• 13 years ago

Very cool! Great job!

senorsmile• 13 years ago

I got a kernel panic trying to boot tinycore linux:

Decompressing Linux... Parsing ELF... done. Booting the kernel. init[1]: segfault at b8e8e089 ip 08071929 sp bfb81b08 error 4 in busybox[8048000 +7c000] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! exitcode=0x0000000b

atkbd serio0: Spurious ACK on isa0060/serio0. Some program might be trying to ac cess hardware directly.

g316• 13 years ago

Both bugs are fixed now.

schmatz• 13 years ago

I can just imagine the posts in a few years: "Look at my JavaScript GPU emulator!"

krallin• 13 years ago

Doesn't quite exactly work on a non QWERTY keyboard : (

Still awesome, though!

dancecodes5• 13 years ago

Very interesting. Great job!

No xhr queries detected in firebug and firefox console. Its is done without AJAX? How its working? Thanks.

dancecodes5• 13 years ago

wireshark says like "encrypted allert"

saw https packets

dancecodes5• 13 years ago

now waiting release for support lxc containers :)

constablebrew• 13 years ago

I really want to make this run Node...

Show HN: My x86 emulator written in JavaScript

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