In today’s climate, I needed this: GentleOS, an operating system targeting both 386 (GentleOS/32) and even processors as old as the 80186 (GentleOS/16), with a lovely retro graphical user interface, usable on bare metal, and, of course, open source.
Its goal is to provide a simple platform for tinkering with retro hardware and running graphical interactive apps on bare metal.
At minimum, it only requires an i386 CPU, 4MB of RAM, and a VGA display capable of 640x480x16 mode.
By design it’s entirely monolithic, mostly configured at compile time, and only supports standard PC devices: VGA/SVGA, keyboard, PS/2 mouse, serial mouse, PC speaker. The only future plans are bugfixes, optimizations, and adding more apps.
GentleOS/32 has a pure 16-bit spin-off called GentleOS/16, which targets devices as old as 80186.
↫ GentleOS GitHub page
While it can be run on real hardware, you can also run it in Qemu to make it easier to test and play around with. It looks great, and the stated goal of just focusing on maintenance and possibly additional applications is music to my heart. With everything that’s going on in technology today, this is an ice-cold glass of tonic in a scorching, data center-infested desert.
I bet this would run great on the Hand386! I wish I had held on to my first x86 PC from 1995, a TI (Acer) TravelMate 4000M with a 486SX and 4MB of RAM. It would also be a good contender for this OS. I guess I’ll be firing up QEMU instead.
https://yeokhengmeng.com/2023/06/teardown-and-review-of-hand386/
There appears to be no way to open a bug report, but I’d love to get clarification on that line, given how niche the 80186 was because its built-in peripherals prevented 100% IBM PC 5150 compatibility.
If that’s a typo and they meant 8086, I’d like to know. If they really meant 80186, I’d love to see a write-up on how and why they depend on features present in the 80186 but not the 8086.
From the GentleOS/16 page:
I don’t think they were specifically targeting full IBM 5150 compatibility, just 16-bit x86 machines in general. They have pictures of it running on NEC V20 and V30 based machines, which were 8088 class CPUs with a 16-bit data bus and more features.
I should be able to try on a HP 200LX shortly.
In general, though perhaps not in this case, “80186” refers to the x86 instruction set including the 80186 extensions, that were later incorporated into the 80286 (or more likely, since these CPUs were developed during the same time, the extension were decided on and incorporated in both), the formost being multi-bit shifts (e.g. SHL AX,4), and things like ENTER/LEAVE, PUSHA/POPA, and IMUL and PUSH with an immediate value as operand.
It’s weird they say “I don’t have such [a] PC to test” since emulators like MartyPC exist, and they’re apparently oblivious of the new instructions in the 80186 vs. the 8086. Also, it implies they do have an 80186 PC to test on, which is likely not true, as these were rare and not IBM PC compatible.