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86Box v4.2.1

September 1, 2024 - written by richardg867

This is the September 2024 update to 86Box, bringing in the results of a month-long bugfix marathon started right after the original v4.2 release.

The removal of 32-bit builds and the release of a new Patreon feature preview, both outlined in the v4.2 post, are still on track for the next full release.

Important notes

We need help!

While this release has many bugfixes, we could have done so much more if not for our limited resources. Our development team consists entirely of volunteers, many with full-time jobs, who have poured countless hours of work and even out-of-pocket money to help make 86Box the best retro PC emulator out there. While donations through Patreon and PayPal are always appreciated, the project also needs help in other ways.

Code contributions

We are lacking contributors in various areas of expertise, including but not limited to:

Our GitHub and Discord are always open to pull requests and code contribution discussions, respectively; we will follow development and provide constructive feedback if needed. The codebase documentation is currently lacking in details about the emulator’s inner workings, but this is something we are looking into correcting in the future.

Testing

In our mission to cover almost two decades’ worth of the very diverse PC ecosystem, 86Box ends up emulating a large quantity of hardware which only piles up over time. We admit to having lost our way in the past when it comes to adding new hardware components; from the many machines added in the last few releases (just for the novelty of their unique platform-BIOS combinations) to the Matrox video cards, a lot of new stuff did not work properly at first and had to be bugfixed later, not to mention all the existing components that have remained broken for several releases because no one noticed.

Even if you’re not a programmer, you can help us with testing this sheer mass of hardware, observing any issues with drivers, applications, or even different behavior from the real thing if you happen to have it. With how open and unpredictable the PC platform can be, writing emulation is only half the battle, and testing is key to make sure the next user doesn’t get a nasty surprise when building their emulated system; after all, the beauty of 86Box is the ability to go absolutely wild with hardware configurations (want to see how much a Voodoo 3 gets bottlenecked by a Pentium 1?) without having to procure real components, which are often getting too old and expensive to be practical to use.

ROM set update

A minor change was made to the ROM set. Users of the Diamond Stealth 3D 4000 video card based on the S3 ViRGE/GX2 chip should update the ROM set, as a newer video BIOS version was located. If this update is not present, the card will disappear from emulated machines and the video card selector until the ROM set is updated.

Updating the ROM set will also change the Phoenix XT clone machine to a newer BIOS revision which was also located.

Changelog

Emulator

Machines

Hardware