One page per addition that a line on the releases page does not carry:
what it is, screenshots of it running, and the video if there is one.
August 2026
Newest first.
Browser
My latest experiment
A web browser for the IBM PC XT
os8088 now fetches real web pages and lays them out as text and tables, over an
Ethernet card or a parallel cable to a DOS machine standing next to it. The network is not
the slow part: drawing a window full of text takes longer than fetching the page.
- the browser
- 13,889 bytes
- the stack
- ARP to TCP
- machine
- 4.77 MHz 8088
RunCPM
CP/M, in a window
CP/M was the operating system small computers ran before the IBM PC existed, on a processor
the PC does not have. os8088 now emulates that processor, so CP/M software runs here: the 1979
command processor at the prompt, Microsoft BASIC, an assembler and an editor, in a window you
can drag around like any other.
- emulates
- a Zilog Z80
- written in
- 4,679 lines of C
- machine
- 4.77 MHz 8088
Written in C
A new program
A word processor written in C
Everything in os8088 up to now was written in assembly language, one processor instruction
at a time. There is now a C compiler for it, which is a far quicker way to write a program. To
find out whether it could carry something real, I wrote a second word processor with it — and
it turned out too big for the memory a program gets, so it comes in two pieces.
- written in
- 8,350 lines of C
- the program
- 54,450 bytes
- machine
- 4.77 MHz 8088
Microsoft Word
A new program
Microsoft Word, on an 8086
I have added something I have wanted to see for a while: my own os8088 version of
Microsoft Word 1.1a. It has the familiar 1990 menus, uses the same clever tricks to show
bold and italics on a plain old PC screen, and saves Word .DOC files. The whole program fits
in 47KB.
- the program
- 47,212 bytes
- saves
- Word .DOC files
- machine
- 4.77 MHz 8088
Two monitors
A new feature
Two monitors, one desktop
A PC of this era could hold a monochrome card and a colour card at once, because their
picture memory sat at different addresses. Almost nothing used both together. os8088 now
spans one desktop across the pair — 1,360 pixels wide, on a 4.77 MHz machine — and a
window that lands over the join is drawn on both screens.
- monitors
- 2
- one desktop
- 1,360 x 348
- machine
- 4.77 MHz 8088
Frotz
A new program
os8088 plays Infocom games now
A Z-machine interpreter in 23,722 bytes of 8086 assembly. The Z-machine is the pretend
computer Infocom invented in 1979 so one game could be sold for every machine at once —
which is why a story file from 1982 is still a plain file that still runs. Mini-Zork,
Colossal Cave Adventure, Zork: The Undiscovered Underground and Photopia all play, off a
floppy of their own.
- the interpreter
- 23,722 bytes
- story formats
- v1 to v8
- games it fetches
- 15
