OSDev.org

Were there any non-DOS operating systems or plain-boot utilities for the 8086-80186 era systems?

Basically, i'm making an emulator for XT/V20 kind of system, and the only software i can find are DOS, MS-DOS, another DOS and DOS programs.
Problem is, something too simple like boot sectors or my old 16bit OS works perfectly, while something slightly more complex hangs or crashes somewhere far and deep, but before any use.

So, 80186 bootable diagnostic programs would be perfect, bootsector games and demos would be good, and alternative OS'es or something similar would be nice.
That is what i'm looking for.

Anyone know where to look or where to get?

Indeed, there were games that booted directly from floppies on legacy x86 systems (..and even others).

There is a list of such games on Wikipedia, along with an article about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PC_Booter_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Booter

I'm not aware of any applications that were bootable, but a lot of complex software from that era essentially used DOS as a bootloader.. not directly utilizing its services.

It's also possible that you may not be able to find a copy of these games anywhere, so, the usefulness is debatable.

If you're looking for non-DOS software, you might want to look at Minix 1/2 as they ran on 8086/80186/80286 XT class machines.. also some early x86 Unix systems, like SCO/Microsoft's Xenix.

PC booter is the key word all right, and a lot of games there.

It's also possible that you may not be able to find a copy of these games anywhere, so, the usefulness is debatable.

Googleable term is tosec.2006-05-16, that's where i found a lot of them.

Now i'm playing alley cat instead of fixing an input bug with frogger
The good old days when BIOS was all it took to make a PC useful.

Then, Minix seems to be acquirable, and stops in bootloader - nice.
Xenix is something obscure, and apparently only 386 compatible.
There is also something called CP/M, that kinda boots, but i have no idea what to expect of it.

Thank you for that, it comes in handy.


Anyway, if someone know of, preferably bootable, tools for hardware verification, for example, i would appreciate knowing about it.
Things like that, for example: http://www.oldskool.org/pc/cgacomp

There was a 286 port of Xenix, not sure how easy it will be to find it though.

And let's go further back in history: Xenix was also released for the 8086/8 (see Wikipedia).


JAL

Artlav wrote:There is also something called CP/M, that kinda boots, but i have no idea what to expect of it.

CP/M is what MS-DOS was modelled after, it was comparable to MS-DOS 1.25 and was extremely popular on Z80 machines.
CP/M-86 and CP/M-68 are the same thing ported to the 8086 and 68000, respectively. It failed on the PC because it was sold
alongside DOS at a higher price point (set by IBM, as they wanted to encourage their own revenue gain via their one-time flat price
licensing of MS-DOS). CP/M-86 is kind of fun, though. IIRC, it came with a utility to translate Z80 machine code into tiny-model 8086
.COM files.

EDIT: Just realized I necroposted, sorry. It was only a week, though, rigor mortis hadn't quite set in. I just thought she was asleep,
officer! I swear!

There was Xenix, Microsoft's incarnation of Unix - later bought by somebody else.

There is the operating system IBM originally intended for the PC - CP/M-16

Artlav wrote:Were there any non-DOS operating systems or plain-boot utilities for the 8086-80186 era systems?

Basically, i'm making an emulator for XT/V20 kind of system, and the only software i can find are DOS, MS-DOS, another DOS and DOS programs.
Problem is, something too simple like boot sectors or my old 16bit OS works perfectly, while something slightly more complex hangs or crashes somewhere far and deep, but before any use.

So, 80186 bootable diagnostic programs would be perfect, bootsector games and demos would be good, and alternative OS'es or something similar would be nice.
That is what i'm looking for.

Anyone know where to look or where to get?

i'm working on an 8086 PC emulator myself, and ive developed quite a little collection of things to try and boot on it. you sound like you've hit a similar situation to myself as well. boot sectors run, my own 16-bit OS, and a generic 8088/V20 BIOS also runs fine in my emulator. IBM ROM BASIC is mostly working as well. stuff like DOS doesn't want to boot all the way. heck, maybe we could compare notes.

get in touch with me if you want.

Casm wrote:There was Xenix, Microsoft's incarnation of Unix - later bought by somebody else.

There is the operating system IBM originally intended for the PC - CP/M-16

heh, ive tried booting Xenix86 on my little PC emulator. it filled the screens with E's endlessly. i thought, oh wow i really screwed up something in my code. then i wrote the disk image to a real floppy and booted it in my ancient 1983 compaq portable (yes it still works, and is a year older than me) .... lo, and behold, same thing. the compaq's screen filled with E's. at least it wasn't my fault!

Artlav wrote:PC booter is the key word all right, and a lot of games there.

It's also possible that you may not be able to find a copy of these games anywhere, so, the usefulness is debatable.

Googleable term is tosec.2006-05-16, that's where i found a lot of them.

Now i'm playing alley cat instead of fixing an input bug with frogger
The good old days when BIOS was all it took to make a PC useful.

Then, Minix seems to be acquirable, and stops in bootloader - nice.
Xenix is something obscure, and apparently only 386 compatible.
There is also something called CP/M, that kinda boots, but i have no idea what to expect of it.

Thank you for that, it comes in handy.


Anyway, if someone know of, preferably bootable, tools for hardware verification, for example, i would appreciate knowing about it.
Things like that, for example: http://www.oldskool.org/pc/cgacomp

wow, yeah MINIX (1 and 2) stop for me during the bootloader as well. sounds like our emulators are at like the exact same point more or less. there was an 8086 version of Xenix (As mentioned in the previous post) and i DO have a copy of it.

miker00lz wrote:i'm working on an 8086 PC emulator myself, and ive developed quite a little collection of things to try and boot on it.

Mine is available over there - http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=12246
It already boots several DOS versions and runs Windows 3.0.
My aim was to develop a varied set of emulations of older x86 CPUs and hardware (bugs and peculiarities included), up to genuine 286, along with a comprehensive debugger (visual memory and instruction disassembly, reverse execution, seeing state of everything, etc).
Might be of use to someone one day.

What images of Minix/Xenix do you have?
I wasn't able to find 16bit Xenix, and minix images i have are weird.

Artlav wrote:

miker00lz wrote:i'm working on an 8086 PC emulator myself, and ive developed quite a little collection of things to try and boot on it.

Mine is available over there - http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=12246
It already boots several DOS versions and runs Windows 3.0.
My aim was to develop a varied set of emulations of older x86 CPUs and hardware (bugs and peculiarities included), up to genuine 286, along with a comprehensive debugger (visual memory and instruction disassembly, reverse execution, seeing state of everything, etc).
Might be of use to someone one day.

What images of Minix/Xenix do you have?
I wasn't able to find 16bit Xenix, and minix images i have are weird.

ah, you can get into windows 3.0 huh? definitely farther along than me then. i'm going to have a look thanks for the link. "flatassembler.net" - it's all in ASM? nice. mine's in C, and i even wrote a prototype sort of version in FreeBASIC.

unsure exactly what version Xenix86 i have, but it's a very early one. it comes on a bunch of 360 KB images. i'm sending you a PM about it.

miker00lz wrote:ah, you can get into windows 3.0 huh? definitely farther along than me then.

Yeah, but it's black-and-white CGA and without mouse.
Also, many seemingly simple games won't work for completely cryptic reasons.

miker00lz wrote: i'm going to have a look thanks for the link. "flatassembler.net" - it's all in ASM? nice. mine's in C, and i even wrote a prototype sort of version in FreeBASIC.

No, it's in pascal and portable. The BIOS is in fasm though.
Assembler enthusiasts are just the potential target auditorium, since my aim is precision.

I've been doing some slight fixing since then - fixed 8086/8088 distinction, for example.
I wonder if anyone would care for such details. It takes a very good CPU type detection gizmo to even notice the differences.

Here are the files, the emulator itself: http://orbides.1gb.ru/ape/epc-110128.zip (2.8 Mb)
And the HDD image: http://orbides.1gb.ru/ape/epc-hdd.zip (54 Mb)
Comments are welcome, as usual.

miker00lz wrote:unsure exactly what version Xenix86 i have, but it's a very early one. it comes on a bunch of 360 KB images. i'm sending you a PM about it.

Nice, it boots. Thank you. No such luck with the other one you gave.
Having a manual would be nice, what the hell does it expect at the boot prompt?