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  • Even A Cheap Little Microcontroller Can Emulate A 386-Based PC Now

    From Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=@ldo@nz.invalid to comp.misc on Wed Nov 12 23:48:50 2025
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    This hacker has written a 386 PC emulator, complete with a basic set of
    useful emulated peripherals, that runs on a ESP32-S3 microcontroller
    board <https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/tiny386-emulator-turns-an-esp-s3-microcontroller-into-a-full-i386-pc-tiny-virtual-machine-can-boot-windows-95-and-linux>.

    The entire project has taken about 6,000 lines of C99 code so far.
    There are admittedly still some gaps, but so far it is functional
    enough to boot Windows 95 and Linux. That even includes a modern Linux
    kernel, which no longer runs on an original 386 processor, after the
    addition of some 486 and Pentium instruction extensions.
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