86Box 4.1.1 fixes bugs from the previous PC emulator release
As I have said in the past few weeks, 86Box is a PC emulator that is constantly updated and is probably destined for great things in the future. A month after the release of version 4.1, developers have now released a minor update mainly designed to fix the bugs that surfaced in the previous release. While not particularly noteworthy for emulating historically important technology such as the Matrox video cards added in the aforementioned version 4.1, 86Box 4.1.1 doesn’t miss the chance to add new virtual peripherals to the ever-growing list of PC hardware emulated by the program.
The project’s official blog reports that 86Box 4.1.1 features a minor change to the set of ROMs required for properly emulating some of the aforementioned virtual peripherals. Users employing a virtual replica of the Sound Blaster AWE64 (CT4380) sound card will have to update their ROM set, as an “accurate” version of the ROM built into the original physical card has now been identified. Otherwise, the CT4380 card will disappear from the emulated devices if they continue to use the old ROM with the new release of the emulator.
86Box 4.1.1 includes several bugfixes to the user interface, translations, BIOS error messages (IBM PS/2 Model 70). The emulator’s “core” no longer crashes the guest operating system when using the LOCK instruction on 386 CPUs, and the video portion is also improved by fixing glitches in 3D Voodoo graphics emulation in several games, rendering issues on S3 cards, and more. Storage device emulation is now more stable when using ESDI controllers, just as audio quality with emulation of FM synthesis chips OPL2 and OPL3 is improved as well.
In terms of adding new peripherals, 86Box 4.1.1 brings in some new IBM and compatible machines (IBM Aptiva 510/710/Vision, NEC Mate NX MA23C, PC Chips M747), ISA Trident video card TVGA 8900D-R, the McIDE IDE controller for MCA machines. 86Box is a project mostly focused on emulation accuracy, and the latest version of the program includes a couple of new features in this regard: the maximum CPU speed of the Hyundai SUPER-16T motherboard has been set to 8 MHz, while the maximum video memory of the STB PowerGraph 64 Video card has been corrected to 2 MB to align to the the real card setup.
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