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TobiWan
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Joined: 07 Jul 2003
Posts: 275
Location: Brussels, Old Europe
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 Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 1:39 pm Post subject: Optimizing Bochs performance?! |
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Hi everybody,
I emerged Bochs and installed the vga font manually for X and now it works. I followed the how-to on bochs.sourceforce.net and I'm in the process of installing Windows 98SE... since yesterday. File copying in the Windows setup started yesterday evening and now - 18 hours later - it's still at 68%.
I knew that Bochs was slow, but that slow is just ridiculous. I guess my brain could emulate a faster Pentium... 
I checked whether my system wasn't a fast enough platform for Bochs, but Bochs takes only about 14% to 16% of CPU. I have 1.25GB RAM and spended 256MB on the Bochs process.
Now my question: How can I optimize Bochs? Is there something I can do inside Bochs configuration files or should I try giving the Bochs process a higher priority?
How does a normal user give a process a higher priority, assuming that process is started inside a shell?
Please help me out here because I actually expected to have a running Windows 98SE installation this week...
thanks,
Tobias
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quadbass
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Joined: 07 Sep 2002
Posts: 24
Location: 51.450N, 6.650E
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 7:54 pm Post subject: |
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Theres an addon or patch or something else (i dont know) called plex86.
It skips the emulation of x86 instructions and passes the commands directly to your x86 cpu. It will then work like vmware.
I didn't tried it out, but I think there's an ebuild in portage.
There's also an option in the bochs config, I don't know the exact name, but you can tell bochs to use more cpu times to emulate the cpu. I don't have bochs installed at the moment, try to search for it in the bochs manuals. |
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teilo
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Joined: 20 Jun 2003
Posts: 276
Location: Minneapolis, MN
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 8:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Theres an addon or patch or something else (i dont know) called plex86. |
Plex86 is a project all of its own, not an add-on for bochs. Someone out there had put together some kind of proof of concept, showing that it would be possible to create some sort of Boch/Plex86 hybrid. However, no such thing, to my knowldge, exists. If it did, surely there would be some reference to it on either the Bochs, or the Plex86 page.
The Plex86 project is now focusing on adding VM support directly to the kernel, ala WinLinux.
Plex86 is here: http://plex86.sourceforge.net/
Bochs is here: http://bochs.sourceforge.net/
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Teilo who is called Teilo |
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entropyuva
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Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 29
Location: Centreville, VA
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 9:05 pm Post subject: |
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On the boch website section about installing windows 98 they say to make a disk image of the cd on your harddrive to speed things up. But they say that it will take about 12 hours.
http://bochs.sourceforge.net/doc/docbook/user/x2640.html |
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TobiWan
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Joined: 07 Jul 2003
Posts: 275
Location: Brussels, Old Europe
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 9:47 pm Post subject: That's not it. |
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| entropyuva wrote: | | On the boch website section about installing windows 98 they say to make a disk image of the cd on your harddrive to speed things up. But they say that it will take about 12 hours. |
I followed the docs exactly. In spite of a copied CD, the fact that I granted Bochs 256MB RAM and a CPU usage between 14% and 16%, the installation is still running. 
I did the first reboot after the initial Windows installation ten minutes ago...
This sucks. I didn't realize that Bochs was THAT slow. Moving the mouse inside Bochs is like trying to run KDE 3 on a 386 with 20MHz.
There has to something I can do about its performance. I mean it's not like my Athlon 1400 is sweating or so. Even with all kinds of other desktop stuff like kmess, licq, OO and Mozilla, CPU usage is not above 20%. I was expecting it to be at least at 80 to 90%. How can I grant Bochs priority for CPU usage?
Please help me, will ya?  I need Windows just for one stupid application at university which doesn't run under WINE.
thanks,
Tobias
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echeslack
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 131
Location: NJ, USA
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 11:33 pm Post subject: |
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did you change your ips in the config file? If they don't closely approximate the actual number of ips your computer can do it won't work well. If I remember correctly, they are set far too low for recent computers.
-ewen |
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entropyuva
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Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 29
Location: Centreville, VA
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| Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 1:28 am Post subject: |
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Ohhhkay..
Well i've been planning on installing win98 on bochs for a while, so i guess this is a good excuse too. I seem to be expierencing the same results as TobiWan. the default ips is defiantly too slow so i'm gona crank mine up to 3million. (i have a p3 1ghz)
I havent seen the results yet because i dont want to restart bochs in the middle of this god-awful slow install. 
I'll report back when i get a chance to restart it.
http://bochs.sourceforge.net/doc/docbook/user/x1069.html#AEN1331
(do you think that 3million is a good number for me?) |
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entropyuva
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Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 29
Location: Centreville, VA
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| Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 2:40 am Post subject: |
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| Also, does anybody know how to get to the power/reset/copy..etc.. button bar on top. the main windows screen takes the focus as soon as i mouse over anywhere on the window so i cant click on them. |
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TobiWan
Apprentice
Joined: 07 Jul 2003
Posts: 275
Location: Brussels, Old Europe
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| Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:35 am Post subject: Same problems here... |
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| entropyuva wrote: | | Also, does anybody know how to get to the power/reset/copy..etc.. button bar on top. the main windows screen takes the focus as soon as i mouse over anywhere on the window so i cant click on them. |
Same problems here, mate.
I thought that it's maybe a problem with my X cursors because I use these shiny golden ones... but since you are having the same problems...
I guess some of our problems can only be solved on the Bochs mailing lists... unless we heave a Bochs genius around here? 
cheers,
Tobias
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TobiWan
Apprentice
Joined: 07 Jul 2003
Posts: 275
Location: Brussels, Old Europe
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| Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:41 am Post subject: IPS |
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| echeslack wrote: | did you change your ips in the config file? If they don't closely approximate the actual number of ips your computer can do it won't work well. If I remember correctly, they are set far too low for recent computers.
-ewen |
That might actually be it.
Well, my initial reasoning was that Bochs would try and use as much CPU time of my real CPU to emulate the fake one but obviously it uses a fixed value of instructions per second, wasting good old CPU capacity
I'll give it a try when I'm home in the afternoon.
cheers,
Tobias
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TobiWan
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Joined: 07 Jul 2003
Posts: 275
Location: Brussels, Old Europe
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| Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 8:39 am Post subject: Setting IPS |
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Hi everybody,
The IPS setting changed a lot.
I tried "4000000" first but that didn't do the trick. I then increased the value to "10000000" and now I finally get a CPU usage caused by Bochs from up to 90% on my Athlon 1400.
I can't say anything about the actual Windows 98 performance because it's still doing the last steps of the installation (seeking for hardware, urgh ). But when it's up and running I'll post my results.
cheers,
Tobias
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quadbass
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Joined: 07 Sep 2002
Posts: 24
Location: 51.450N, 6.650E
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| Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 11:35 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | did you change your ips in the config file? |
aaah, this is the mysterious thing I was talking about |
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entropyuva
n00b
Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 29
Location: Centreville, VA
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| Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 3:15 pm Post subject: |
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Still at 82% copying files....
ugg...
Still havent had a chance to restart the danged thing |
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minimizebeefgoo
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 24 Jul 2003
Posts: 149
Location: MI, USA
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 12:08 am Post subject: |
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For those with mouse issues: middle-clicking the mouse button should disable Bochs's mouse grabbing and let you click stuff again. Middle clicking again will give control back to Bochs.
For echeslack: Thanks, I thought it was supposed to be what I was trying to emulate (80486  ). |
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entropyuva
n00b
Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 29
Location: Centreville, VA
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 5:07 am Post subject: |
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minimizebeefgoo: thanks dude, the middle click works like a charm
also i finally got the ips up to 3mil.. big difference in mouse responiveness. the jury is still out as far is file copying is concerned. |
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entropyuva
n00b
Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 29
Location: Centreville, VA
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 4:51 pm Post subject: |
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Cool, works now.. CPU usage hovers between 80% and 100%. My mouse is responsive enough to be useful. The sb16 driver dosent seem to want to work. Windows detects that the device is there but the driver won't work.
Here is a screenshot to creep everybody out:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/drsaturn/root.jpg
(The blue bar on the bottom is my cpu usage) |
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TobiWan
Apprentice
Joined: 07 Jul 2003
Posts: 275
Location: Brussels, Old Europe
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 8:29 pm Post subject: Still quite sluggish but working now. |
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I got it up and running too. I set the IPS value to 10 millions but overall performance really is sluggish. Anything else I can modify to increase results?
Also I only have 16 colors and a resolution of 640*480. What kind of vga driver do I need to install to enjoy a higher resolution and more colors? 800*600 with 256 colors will do fine.
As for the middle mouse click: many thanks. Before I knew that I always had to change the desktop by hitting control+tab to get my mouse back.
thanks,
Tobias
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TobiWan
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Joined: 07 Jul 2003
Posts: 275
Location: Brussels, Old Europe
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| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2003 3:01 pm Post subject: This is strange... |
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I can swear I only posted once.
Sorry anyway 
Tobias
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quadbass
n00b
Joined: 07 Sep 2002
Posts: 24
Location: 51.450N, 6.650E
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| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2003 3:56 pm Post subject: |
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<snip>
ooops, wrong package
</snip>
Last edited by quadbass on Sun Sep 28, 2003 5:38 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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watashiwaotaku7
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Joined: 26 Mar 2003
Posts: 70
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| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2003 4:29 pm Post subject: |
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| im thinking of installing bochs, can anyone tell me a good number to start out with as far as the IPS value for a 2.8ghz p4? |
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TobiWan
Apprentice
Joined: 07 Jul 2003
Posts: 275
Location: Brussels, Old Europe
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| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2003 4:46 pm Post subject: |
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| watashiwaotaku7 wrote: | | im thinking of installing bochs, can anyone tell me a good number to start out with as far as the IPS value for a 2.8ghz p4? |
Try several millions. I'm not joking. Start at 4 millions. Don't try to install until you have found the optimum value. Unless you have much time that is...
Tobias
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MOS-FET
Apprentice
Joined: 20 May 2003
Posts: 291
Location: Cologne, Germany
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| Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2003 1:33 pm Post subject: |
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hi i've emerged the newest bochs, configured it with textmenu. when i start the simulation, i get the following output. it seems there is a white window popping up for 0.0001 secs but it closes immideately, then i get this error message. anyone know what do to do?
00000000000i[ ] installing x module as the Bochs GUI
00000000000e[ ] No romimage to load. Is your bochsrc file loaded/valid ?
00000000000i[MEM0 ] allocated memory at 0x4f815008. after alignment, vector=0x4f816000
00000000000i[MEM0 ] 256.00MB
00000000000i[CMOS ] Setting initial clock to: Sat Nov 22 14:31:40 2003 (time0=1069507900)
00000000000i[DMA ] channel 4 used by cascade
00000000000i[DMA ] channel 2 used by Floppy Drive
00000000000i[XGUI ] test_alloc_colors: 16 colors available out of 16 colors tried
00000000000i[XGUI ] font 8 wide x 16 high, display depth = 24
00000000000i[VGA ] interval=30000
00000000000i[ ] init_mem of 'harddrv' plugin device by virtual method
00000000000i[ ] init_mem of 'keyboard' plugin device by virtual method
00000000000i[ ] init_dev of 'harddrv' plugin device by virtual method
00000000000i[HD ] HD on ata0-0: 'diskc.img'
00000000000i[HD ] translation on ata0-0 set to 'large'
00000000000i[HD ] Boot device will be 'c'
00000000000i[HD ] Floppy boot signature check is disabled
00000000000i[ ] init_dev of 'keyboard' plugin device by virtual method
00000000000i[KBD ] will paste characters every 1000 keyboard ticks
00000000000i[ ] reset of 'harddrv' plugin device by virtual method
00000000000i[ ] reset of 'keyboard' plugin device by virtual method
00000000000i[XGUI ] [x] Mouse on
00000000000i[CPU ] BxError: instruction with op1=0xff
00000000000i[CPU ] nnn was 7
00000000000i[CPU ] WARNING: Encountered an unknown instruction (signalling illegal instruction):
00000032767p[CPU ] >>PANIC<< prefetch: RIP > CS.limit
00000032767i[SYS ] Last time is 1069507900
00000032767i[XGUI ] Exit.
00000032767i[CPU ] real mode
00000032767i[CPU ] CS.d_b = 16 bit
00000032767i[CPU ] SS.d_b = 16 bit
00000032767i[CPU ] | EAX=00000001 EBX=00000000 ECX=00000000 EDX=00000300
00000032767i[CPU ] | ESP=0000fffa EBP=00000000 ESI=00000000 EDI=00000000
00000032767i[CPU ] | IOPL=0 NV UP DI PL NZ NA PO NC
00000032767i[CPU ] | SEG selector base limit G D
00000032767i[CPU ] | SEG sltr(index|ti|rpl) base limit G D
00000032767i[CPU ] | DS:0000( 0000| 0| 0) 00000000 0000ffff 0 0
00000032767i[CPU ] | ES:0000( 0000| 0| 0) 00000000 0000ffff 0 0
00000032767i[CPU ] | FS:0000( 0000| 0| 0) 00000000 0000ffff 0 0
00000032767i[CPU ] | GS:0000( 0000| 0| 0) 00000000 0000ffff 0 0
00000032767i[CPU ] | SS:0000( 0000| 0| 0) 00000000 0000ffff 0 0
00000032767i[CPU ] | CS:0000( 0000| 0| 0) 00000000 0000ffff 0 0
00000032767i[CPU ] | EIP=00010000 (00010000)
00000032767i[CPU ] | CR0=0x60000010 CR1=0x00000000 CR2=0x00000000
00000032767i[CPU ] | CR3=0x00000000 CR4=0x00000000
00000032767i[ ] restoring default signal behavior
========================================================================
Bochs is exiting with the following message:
[CPU ] prefetch: RIP > CS.limit
========================================================================
00000032767i[CTRL ] quit_sim called with exit code 1 |
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Mayhem
n00b
Joined: 24 May 2003
Posts: 70
Location: Spijkenisse, the Netherlands
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2003 8:23 am Post subject: |
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I'm no expert on this but in some benchmarks performance is measured in MIPS rather then ips...
A 200mhz cpu does something like 200MIPS. That would mean an ips setting of 10M for a 1.4ghz machine would be FAR to conservative.
Please correct me if im wrong, can't try this because im using a imac bondi blue and boch fails to compile so far
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PEETIE
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 28 Mar 2004
Posts: 144
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| Posted: Sat May 01, 2004 9:26 am Post subject: |
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I've noticed that setting my IPS too high slows bochs down as well, i tried to match my ips as close as i could and used 6.5 million for my Athlon xp 2000+ and it performs better than it did at 10 million. I used this article as a reference.
http://www.epinions.com/content_89963400836 |
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StringCheesian
l33t
Joined: 21 Oct 2003
Posts: 887
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| Posted: Sat May 01, 2004 9:15 pm Post subject: |
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| If bochs isn't fast enough for you, you should check out QEMU. It's new (just recently became able to run WinXP), but much faster than bochs. |
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