MS-DOS Correspondent Kevin Lipe reporting again from the trailing edge of computing. When I was last with you, we discussed the Pocket 8086. If you do

Project 8086 Part II: Real Mode Productivity; or, 8,086 Reasons to Get a Newer Computer

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2025-01-20 16:30:04

MS-DOS Correspondent Kevin Lipe reporting again from the trailing edge of computing. When I was last with you, we discussed the Pocket 8086. If you don’t remember what the Pocket 8086 is, or who I am, or what any of this has to do with everyone’s favorite Apple blog, I’d refer you to part one of that series, as it will sort of answer maybe two of those questions.

I was pretty ambivalent about whether the Pocket 8086 was good at what it was trying to do, because I didn’t really think there was much of a goal for the project other than “hey this is cool.” But as someone who always loves a good deep dive into old software tools to see what I can learn about how to work with new ones, I have to admit that I felt a strong urge to see if I could actually find some thing to use it for.

So that’s what we’re doing here: exploring the questions “what do I really do with computers?” and “what happens if I try to do those things on a Pocket 8086?”