Not sure how everyone here feels about AI, but I used ChatGPT to help port MicroPython to 16-bit DOS.

It's running on my Tandy 1000 EX with a 7 MHz NEC V20 processor. It supports a surprising amount of Python 3 functionality, including classes, generators, regular expressions, JSON, SHA-256, and more.

It's still a work in progress, but I'm pretty happy with how far it's come!

Source: https://github.com/ARMoir/micropython/tree/tandypy-dos16-port/ports/dos16

https://trogen.loudspeakerlab.io

If you played a lot of dos games, you might be like me in that the 90s demoscene left an indelible impression on you. I did some Pascal and in-line assembly coding in the 90s, but never to the level of real demoscene or cracktro coders. trogen is a chance for you to live (or re-live) those dreams.

It lets you compose a demo using real 90s demoscene effects, music, and fonts. The browser window js-dos emulator, but you can download the .exe and run on a real dos machine with SB16 or GUS. It even provides the Pascal / asm source if you want to hand modify. If you make a cool demo you want to share, the demo config is encoded in the URL, so you can paste the URL anywhere and others can load up your configuration.

Curious thoughts, feedback. I'm having a lot of fun with it :)

AI disclaimer: AI coding tools were most def used to help me create this. All of the source material is publicly available demos and source code from real 90s demos.

I remember Quarantine mostly for the vibe: Kemo City sealed off, a grimy first-person view from behind the wheel, and a cab that kept getting upgrades until it was basically a tank. The fares were supposed to be the point, but I spent most of my time just trying to survive the streets. Did anyone here play it seriously and follow the missions, or was it pure chaos for you too? And did you ever try the sequel, Road Warrior?

I have created a video tutorial on installing DOS and Windows 1 on a Virtual Machine with working mouse drivers. You can experience full DOS and Windows 1 without any issues.

Let me know if you have any questions or need further assistance.❤️

ATA BBS runs the real DOS bulletin board software of the 80s and 90s, byte for byte unmodified, on ordinary shared web hosting, the kind you already pay for if you have a WordPress site or something like that. Your callers open a web address and the board answers: the modem ceremony, then the real logon prompt. No telnet, no terminal program, no VPS, no open ports, no PC left running in a closet.

How it works, in two sentences. The caller's browser boots a small FreeDOS machine (the v86 emulator) and runs the actual board program on it, with the board's files served from your host as a network drive. Your host never runs DOS; it serves files, holds the record locks, keeps the snapshots, and decides what a caller's machine may write. (There is a far more detailed technical explanation on the website if you're curious: How ATA BBS works).

What it does today

• One file to install. Upload a small PHP installer to an empty folder, open it, pick a board from the list and answer a five-minute wizard. The board comes up closed so you can make it yours first.

• Multi-node. Six lines out of the box on most packages, up to the package's own limit. Several callers at once, in the board and in its doors, tested properly. You can set up as many nodes as the package allows and your hosting can handle.

• File transfers through the board's own menus: XMODEM, YMODEM, YMODEM-G and ZMODEM, in the browser.

• Door games. LORD and similar runs on every board with a door command, the way it always did: the board's own menu and its own drop file. The manual shows how to install LORD on each board, and the process is the same for any other door. The Major BBS runs Galactic Empire and Legends of Kyrandia as native modules. TBBS runs TDBS programs (Legends) and hands DOS doors to a second machine through InterChange.

• Page the SysOp, with break-in chat. A page reaches the console (and a desktop notification if you want one). You can watch any caller's screen live, in color, exactly as they see it, then break in and type, and the chat window and its timer are the package's own.

• A SysOp console in the browser: a dashboard with the lamps, the lines, calls today and ever, and the log; settings for the line cap and the upload room; nightly and weekly events as batch files, with a snapshot taken first; and a DOS page that puts each package's own utilities on buttons (CONFIG, PCBSetup, SCFG, whatever yours uses) with a raw DOS prompt underneath.

• New in the beta: a file manager for the board drive, with a text editor that opens batch files, configs, menu sources and screens, drawn the way DOS draws them and saved back with their DOS line ends, plus a copy of anything you replace, kept for 14 days. And a built-in ANSI editor (ATDT's, with a gallery, TheDraw-style fonts, SAUCE and .ans import and export) with a Send to the board button.

• Passwords never cross the wire. The board program running in a caller's browser never sees a real password; your host checks it and hands the program a stand-in. A caller's machine can change only what a caller could have changed in 1993, and every refused write is logged.

• Free, MIT licensed. One build, no keys, no tiers, no banner. The boards are their authors' own, unmodified, each with its credit line.

The twenty boards:

• Renegade 1.40

• Asgard-86 1.49q

• Citadel-86e 2.19

• Fido v12u

• GAP 6.6

• The Major BBS 6.25

• Maximus 3.01

• PCBoard 15.3

• QuickBBS 2.849

• RBBS-PC 17.4

• RemoteAccess 2.62.1

• Searchlight BBS 5.1

• Spitfire 3.7

• Synchronet 2.30c (new in this release, and the last Synchronet written for DOS)

• T.A.G. 2.7d2

• TBBS 2.3

• Telegard 3.09.g2

• TriBBS 11.6

• VBBS 6.14a

• Virtual Advanced 2.10

Every one of them is answering as a public demo at atabbs.com/demo. Pick one, sign up with a handle and a throwaway password, post a message, trade a file, play LORD, break something.

What's left before 1.0: importing a board you already run, and echomail. That's the whole list. It's a beta, so there are bugs, and the fastest way to get one fixed is to say so on the support forum with the console's Host check report pasted in.

Site and download: atabbs.com. The manual, every page and every board: atabbs.com/manual. ATA is part of the BBS Preservation Project, with ATDT BBS, ATO Doors, Usurper and ANSI Paint.

If you ran one of these boards back then, call its demo and tell me what it gets wrong, here or on the forum.

Hi everyone! I just launched a new YouTube channel dedicated to recreating and exploring classic operating systems using UTM and VirtualBox.

I am kicking off the series with a fully working Windows 1.0 virtual machine running in UTM. Going forward, I will be building a complete series of virtual machine guides and showcases covering classic Windows, early Linux distributions, vintage macOS, and more.

Whether you are curious to see how classic operating systems looked and worked, or you want to learn how to set up and experience these vintage systems on your own computer, this channel is for you. If you enjoy retro tech and virtualization, please check out the first video and subscribe!

My YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Sanburst

Jagged Alliance on DOS is one of those games I still think about. Every merc had their own personality, voice lines and grudges, and some of them flat out refused to work with each other. Losing Ivan or Fidel on Metavira hurt way more than losing a nameless unit in any other strategy game.

The mix of turn-based combat with managing the island economy (tapping the trees for sap) was also unusual for 1994.

Who did you always hire first, and who did you never trust?

I found a review of one of my favourite DOS tools... reminded by the new zoomable text console in Fedora 45, which came out yesterday.

I found a download, too -- link in the comments.

No install, no sign-up, free, the game code is MIT.

Site: https://kirindenis.github.io/wire-city-2/site/

It's a work in progress, so I'd love to hear what breaks or confuses you.

I still remember saving up every dollar for upgrades and then dropping mines just to wreck the guy who kept bumping me. Top-down racing where you buy cars and weapons between races felt so rewarding, and it's wild that Remedy later released it for free. Did you go heavy on mines or the machine gun, and what was your favorite car?

launched my game on IBM PC XT, 256Kb RAM + CGA

I'm trying to find out more about it, but aside from the LGR video it was found in, and a small user-made page, nothing about it seems to have survived, other than the singular copy that LGR archived back in 2022. The only thing I know about it for sure is that it's a menu system.

So I had an old dell vostro 1400

Well it's the only computer I have with true MBR/BIOS

So it's my only opportunity to run dos without CSM or virtualization

It had a broken HDD but no issues I got freeDOS installed on it via a USB

And I actually have

OpenGEM also setup for it

This pc is in shambles

It's CMOS is also dead so dont mind the RTC errrors

You see

I had a dell vostro 1400 with a broken HDD now it was thought of as ewaste but I was like

It's the only computer I have that is a traditional MBR/BIOS. So I can run dos without CSM or Emulations

So I actually used a USB and got FreeDOS on it

And now I run dos on it with OpenGEM7 and Fmsx for MsDOS I havent tried any other apps yet since I got it like on Friday but I have been emulating dos since months and years of knowing and longing to run it! I'll show a pic next post

With 800 Mhz of CPU, 2GB RAM and made only for DOS.

The official minimum required ram for PC-DOS 1.0 was 32kB though in theory it has a memory footprint of <16kB, and because the PC loads the boot sector to 0x7c00 it is impossible to boot unmodified as the highest memory address with 16kB is 0x3fff.

Here I have manually loaded and patched the boot sector using a small machine code program that I loaded into the machine using the cassette basic rom, thus getting around the restriction.

There isn't even enough ram to run edlin😂