All articles tagged with #ms dos
Hackaday reports on a community project to transcribe printed source listings of 86-DOS 1.00, MS-DOS 1.25, and PC-DOS 1.00-dev, including handwritten notes; eight of ten bundles have been transcribed and are ready for compilation with the SCP assembler, with scans on Archive.org and related write-ups linked on the GitHub project, inviting others to contribute.
Microsoft has released the PC-DOS 1.00 source code plus Tim Paterson’s notes under the MIT license, turning the earliest DOS into a browsable, educational Git‑like archive. The materials include not only the assembler listings but a point‑in‑time history, clarifying DOS versioning and showing how 8086‑era development worked. Despite its tiny scope—160KB floppy disks, no subdirectories or hard disks—PC-DOS 1.00 laid the groundwork for Microsoft’s rise during the IBM PC era, and the open release lets researchers and retrocomputing fans clone, build with modern toolchains, and learn from the original OS design.
A German railway company has posted a job vacancy for a Windows 3.11 Administrator with MS-DOS experience to oversee systems with 166MHz processors and 8MB of RAM, highlighting the persistence of legacy technology in mission-critical systems despite the advancement of modern technology.
The "Book 8088" laptop, available on AliExpress, combines modern components with an Intel 8088 processor and 640KB of memory to recreate the experience of using an original IBM PC from 1981. The laptop features a 640x200 16-color LCD screen and built-in interfaces that allow USB accessories and CompactFlash cards to interface with the ancient components. The slow speed and low memory limit make it best suited to MS-DOS, with its text-based interface and general lack of multitasking support. The laptop is made by Hong Kong-based manufacturer Xinrui Technology and is sold out in most versions.
Chinese PC maker launches a mini-laptop called "Book 8088 DOS system" with an Intel 8088 chip, IBM-CGA graphics card, 640KB of memory, and a 16-color, 640 x 200 pixel display. It supports MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.0 or earlier, and comes with a 512MB CompactFlash card for storage and a USB port for peripherals. Optional accessories include an OPL3 sound card module, an ISA expansion card connector, or an 8087 co-processor. The mini-laptop is designed for running decades-old software and is a fascinating device for playing DOS games or running classic programs.
A developer and retrocomputing enthusiast, Yeo Kheng Meng, has created a ChatGPT client that runs on MS-DOS, using an IBM 5155 Portable PC from 1984. He utilized the Open Watcom C/C++ compiler and the MTCP library to overcome the lack of network functions within DOS. The system runs similarly to ChatGPT, including learning from its mistakes, making it the oldest system currently running an AI-based generative pre-trained transformer.
Retrocomputing enthusiast Yeo Kheng Meng has developed a ChatGPT client for MS-DOS that can run on a 4.77 MHz IBM PC from 1981, allowing users to converse with the popular OpenAI language model. Yeo used Open Watcom C/C++ to create the client, which posed a challenge due to MS-DOS's lack of native networking abilities. He also had to create an HTTP-to-HTTPS proxy to enable encrypted HTTPS connections required by ChatGPT APIs. Yeo released his code on GitHub for others to run or improve.
Yeo Kheng Meng has developed a ChatGPT client that runs on MS-DOS, specifically on a 1984 vintage IBM 5155 Portable PC. The program was developed using the Open Watcom C/C++ compiler and networking support was provided by an era-appropriate packet driver together with MTCP. The required TLS encryption was implemented by running that bit of the networking stack on a modern PC and sending an unencrypted HTTP stream to the DOS client. The end result is a delightful retro-futuristic setup that seems to have come straight out of a 1980s science fiction movie.