Dioscuri - the modular emulator

Dioscuri is an x86 computer hardware emulator written in Java. It is designed by the digital preservation community to ensure documents and programs from the past can still be accessed in the future.

The Dioscuri emulator has two key features: it is durable and flexible. Because it is implemented in Java, it can be ported to any computer platform which supports the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), without any extra effort. This reduces the risk that emulation will fail to work on a single architecture in the future, as it will continue to work on another architecture.

Dioscuri is flexible because it is completely component-based. Each hardware component is emulated by a software surrogate called a module. Combining several modules allows the user to configure any computer system, as long as these modules are compatible. New or upgraded modules can be added to the software library, giving the emulator the capability to run these.

Dioscuri is the best choice to retain access to your old documents, games and other applications!



Latest news

19 January 2011
A new release of Dioscuri has been made available by the Dioscuri project team. The new version (0.7.0) offers the following fixes/enhancements:
  • Implemented VNC support. Dioscuri can now act as a VNC server so that it can be operated from other host(s). Tested with the VNC client from TightVNC which has native Windows and Linux support and also a Java based client that could be used on a Mac with a JRE.
  • Fixed some small hot-spots that showed up after profiling version 0.6.0

The addition of the VNC feature was implemented by Evgeni Genev who did this as part of his BSc thesis at the University of Freiburg under supervision of Dirk von Suchodoletz. The Dioscuri developer-team would like to thank them both for their efforts, in particular Evgeni! Thank you!