This just reminds me that I have a real 8088 that I don't know what to do with. Last I knew, it even worked, but it hasn't been turned on in decades so I am not eager to risk it, even if I were to sanity check it for blown capacitors.
ELKS is a Linux subset designed for the 8088, along with a complete toolchain (gcc-ia16). It's also actively maintained and comes with QEMU images and a dockerfile for fast, reproducible builds.
Best to test it on live hardware, it's more rewarding and more fun a toy Unix than xv6.
I have my first computer still, an IBM PC. The last useful thing I did with it is copy the 2015 demo “8088 MHZ”[1] to it. (I still had Telix installed on the hard drive so I was able to copy, via USB drive, the EXE file from my Windows 7 box which didn’t have a serial port to my XP box which did. And then use Hyperterminal and a null modem cable and 9 to 25 pin adapter to the serial port on the PC to send it via Zmodem (I think) protocol. (The demo runs most of the way but I get a parity error/crash at a certain point because it requires 640K and I have a little less than that due to some bad RAM. Even though I set the dip switches to less than the full amount, I think the demo tries to use all the memory space anyway.)
I was thinking of porting Forth (jonesforth) to it. I’d have to use 16 bit assembly language of course instead of 32 bit.
What’s the point of owning it then? Serious question, after seeing that article on junk that was on the front page earlier. Pull it out, fire it up. I had an 8088 “laptop” that I had a lot of fun with as a kid. By then it was obsolete but I got the OS running using one floppy and Megaman launching using the second floppy disk. Good memories.
1. There is a sizable community of retro-computing enthusiasts. It's a fun to being able bring back to action an old computer.
2. Computers evolve very quickly and they are small compare to other artifacts of human history so it is more feasible to have an interesting museum-like collection at home. I consider collecting some old CPUs - hope by the time I will afford to have more possessions they will not be too expensive.
It isn't often that you hear good memories being associated with the DOS version of Megaman. I don't mean to mess with your childhood memories, buy it was widely and rightfully considered an awful game. Capcom wasn't involved in the development of it, and it is a whole new game rather than a port of the original nes game.
Hahah! Well I was maybe 8 years old and just assumed I was terrible at the game. It was just magical to see a game run on a computer when I’d only ever used NES or SNES before.
