Re: Interesting Emulation/Project idea for Linux.

Elijah L. Wright (elw@wc.tntech.edu)
Wed, 9 Apr 1997 20:44:52 -0500 (CDT)

On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Alan Cox wrote:
> > various platforms available, what is stopping someone from adding hooks to
> > the kernel to provide low-level system services to these emulators? Seems
> Because they on the whole don't need any. The ones that do are DOSemu ELKS
> and wine. Those use vm86 and modify_ldt which are in the kernel. Generally
> speaking emulators don't need kernel help. Only those that use processor
> resources and modes.

Sure, but wouldn't it be a heck of a lot faster (potentially) to do it
that way? Seems like people are always expounding upon the glories of
kernel-mode code.... =)

> > platform. The _ELKS_ project might also benefit from work projected in
> > such directions, since that would alleviate the need for them to actually
> > do all their development on the projected hardware platforms. A little
> > CPU, MMU, and io-controller emulator could be really handy.
> I think its almost an insult to think we are that crazy. Most of the ELKS
> work is debugged under DOSemu.

Heh. No insult intended, of course. I wasn't necessarily speaking of the
x86 end of ELKS.. =) My mind is a little more focused on the potential of
a Motorola 683xx port... No MMU, but nice onchip peripherals. =)

--elijah
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