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jggonzyesterday at 9:11 PM2 repliesview on HN

os8088 is an operating system written with AI tools in x86 16-bit assembly with an optional C/C++ app porting toolchain.

It runs on anything with an x86 processor from the early 8088/8086 CPUs up to the latest CPUs. It supports CGA/Hercules + VGA. Sound Blaster, NE2000 network and MFM hard drive support is now available.

We've also ported many cool apps: MOD trackers, TexPad, MS Word 1.1a (in ASM and C), CP/M 2.2 emulator with a ton of apps and games, and several ported games from the early arcade days.

Run it in the browser at: https://os8088.com/demo

Yes, the website has a lot of AI generated content. I'm working on a redesign and tooling to edit and rewrite the content by hand.


Replies

badsectoraculatoday at 12:31 AM

Since you're here let me ask a question i had the last time i saw this project: how does your AI handle the ginormous SPEC.md file?[0] (last time i saw it Github was still able to display it :-P).

Are you feeding the entirety of it to Claude (i guess)? Doesn't that eat pretty much all context - and considering that (AFAIK) the spec file has everything about the OS, doesn't available context space put some sort of "hard ceiling" to what you can add to the OS?

[0] https://github.com/jggonz/os8088/blob/main/SPEC.md

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mysterydipyesterday at 10:11 PM

Interesting project. Have you been able to try it on actual hardware yet? What’s the minimum RAM?

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