Nostalgic DOS Development Part 1 – FreeDOS, DJGPP, RHIDE and other madness.


Modern programming is too abstract, let’s get down to basics and do some programming in DOS using C. You can join in too! In this video I explain how to set up 86Box with FreeDOS, and then how to install DJGPP the C compiler and RHIDE the IDE. Then we write some good old C code in a friendly editor.

Come back to a time when 640k was enough, and when a 486 DX2/66 was considered a fast computer. None of this modern multi-core rubbish or branch predicting exploitable nonsense here. Just you, me, DOS and a C compiler.

This is part of an ongoing series where I learn how to write DOS programs in C and probably assembly. It’s going to be a strange mix between a tutorial and an explanation of how to program in C in MSDOS.

I don’t really have an aim or direction, but over time I hope to gain enough skill in MSDOS programming in C that I can learn VGA programming, some x86 assembly language programming and maybe create some pretty graphical demos.

There is an ongoing blog series you can read too:
Part 1 where I set up 86Box and FreeDOS
Part 2 where we do some simple C programming

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