Emulate older hardware!

[daydr3am3r]

Hi guys,

I'm not sure where to post this or if this is the right place so go easy on me please.
It does seam like a software question but I'm not sure where to post it there.

I am thinking on recovering one of my old systems (P4 2.0GHz, 1GB DDR, 60G HDD, nVidia 6600 128MB) to experiment stuff on it and because I hate to see it laying around with no purpose at all. The mother is broken and I found a SH one for about $25.

But before I go buying it I am curious on what I can actually do with this old system.

So I was thinking I can emulate the hardware and install some old/light OSs and see what happens.

Are there any software solutions that can help me emulate the hardware AND install OSs inside iit? Something like VirtualBox/VMware but with emulation options? I know Virtual PC has these options but since it's MS software you can only run Windows inside.

Any ideas?

 

[USAFRet]

VirtualBox does that too.

 

[daydr3am3r]

Yeah but for example if I use on CPU core it will have as much as my CPU has. I want something that can emulate a Pentium 4 CPU with 1GB DDR1 memory. In other words, I don't want to only virtualize but to emulate the older hardware. Any idea if this is possible? I found some suggestion QEMU but couldn't figure it out.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

What you ask is simply not possible (in realtime anyway). An emulator has to (in software) mimic every single nuance of the hardware. In the case of just a CPU, the emulation must take into account every single register, instruction, and even bugs and undocumented modes of operation in order to provide an accurate emulation. Multiply this by all the other things to be emulated and you rapidly turn into a (very slow) slideshow.

 

[USAFRet]

Have you thought of installing Linux and using the box as a firewall?
no need for a monitor after you have it setup.

http/www.zdnet.com/article/building-a-powerful-affordable-firewall-with-linux/

I do the same with an old AMD box of similar vintage. $50 from some dude on craigslist, several years ago.
A P4 of that vintage, though, may be a bit loud, hot, and power hungry.

 

[daydr3am3r]

Well, I was thinking on installing some Linux distro and play with it for a while, see what comes from all this. But the firewall is a good idea.

I also have an old AMD Sempron from another system I had in the same time. Both system died due to some huge power failure that affected the entire neighborhood and that's all I managed to save. The reasons I prefer the P4 CPU for this is because I found it to be more powerful and because I managed to find a compatible motherboard.

And since we are talking about what I can achieve with an old system, would it be a good idea to use it as a backup/media sharing server? Or it's too much to ask from hardware that old?

@ex_bubblehead - I am not interested in the entire hardware but mostly the CPU and maybe the RAM. I never expected a software capable of emulating everything simple because there are waay to many things to consider.