August 2026
Newest first.
My latest experiment
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 43KB.
- the program
- 43,177 bytes
- saves
- Word .DOC files
- machine
- 4.77 MHz 8088
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
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