If you have gray hair, you probably remember the good old days. game on PC, when companies were developing for MS-DOS, which was the OS par excellence, and which lasted throughout the decade of the 80s until the arrival of Windows 95. Well, if you are a fan of the phenomenon retro and you like to travel through these legendary video games, know that the time when we used emulators like Dosbox Could we count them because there is an easier way? that’s all abandoned software be able to run on current hardware.
Saying something like this is surely going too far, but it is, in essence, what some experts tell us who have managed to find the keys in current processors to be able to reproduce all these software without problems, not with replicas or emulations of the old 8086 from the 80s. Something they have called how to access the “real mode” of modern processors that the PCs we use today have, whether they are equipped with Intel or AMD chipsets.
How to Read MS-DOS Titles Today
This was the Youtuber Ink box who went even further by explaining how to enjoy games programmed for MS-DOS on a PC modern and he bases it on a whole process of testing that’s been going on for the last few weeks. Essentially, what this tells us is that current x86 and 64-bit x86 processors boot into what’s called a 16-bit “real mode,” very similar to the Intel 8086 itself from 1979. This is done to ensure compatibility with older software.
Obviously, all current PCs no longer have a 3.5″ floppy drive, so you would have to use a floppy drive. flash external to fill this gap and, from there, start our computer as if it were a computer manufactured in the 1980s. To do this, it is recommended to boot into. MS-DOS and that our BIOS supports UEFI mode so that it is possible to access this kind of “real mode”. Doesn’t seem too difficult, right?
As you can see in the video, the tests were carried out with an Intel Celeron N3450, a processor from the “Apollo Lake” series designed for low-power computers, similar in time to Intel Core “Broadwell” processors. So, using a ZimaBlade “Icewhale” mini PC with 16 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, the Youtuber was able to boot MS-DOS 8 and MS-DOS 1.0 directly from the hardware by configuring the drive flash as boot device in BIOS.
The result is obvious, and without emulation.
All tests were performed without emulation, without using programs such as Dosbox They allow us to open a window to the past in Windows and enjoy classic titles but, unfortunately, it is sometimes complicated when we have to change disks or perform similar tasks.
He Youtuber was able to play using this technique with classics like LOSS (1993), Tetris (1988) and The Last Ninja (1987) although as with all things PC, each of these older titles may have their own limitations with controls, sound, etc. What do you think?
