On Thu, 19 Oct 2000, Kevin Lawton wrote:
> Currently plex86 is an x86/only project. It's possible to take the
> idea of a monitor running in it's own space (page tables etc) over
> to another architecture, and supplant the SBE control with
> a dynamic translation layer. But that's quite a large task.
> Too much functionality to jam into one project, if we want
> to get it working now.
>
Sounds like Bochs dynamic translation with additional "hardware-aided"
native memory management and protection to speed up things a little. But
that's probably could be only possible if MMU hardware of another
architecture is somewhat similar to x86 (page size, segmentation?) I know
what plex86 is. I've studied the 486 architecture throughly some years
ago, just that most of low-level memory management and protection is used
only in system code, which is not my job, so I forgot most of the details.
Didn't code in asm for quite a time, too. Wish I had time and experience
to be able to participate, but I can't. However emulation and
virtualization are very interesting topics, imo.
> If your issue is slowing down the software running in the VM,
> I'm sure we can do that. There will be support for kicking
> plex86 into a pure emulation mode, like bochs. I have some
> similar code for debugging now.
>
That's a good idea. I understand that the primarily goal is to run
linux/windows/other os'es concurrently but I also hope that plex86 would
be also more DOS apps friendly than VMware, which is a disappointment as a
replace to VDM.
Uhus
