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Version 2.0 of the BOOK 8088 retro mini-laptop adds VGA graphics card and serial ports

The BOOK 8088 is one of the weirdest laptops to launch in 2023. It’s a budget mini-laptop with a 7 inch display, a QWERTY keyboard… and the guts of a 40-year old computer including a Intel 8088 compatible processor with a 4.77 MHz base clock but support for turbo speeds up to 8 MHz. Now […]

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Lilbits: New chips from Apple, Intel, and AMD plus little PCs, both new and old

A small desktop computer that went on sale in China recently is powered by a previously unannounced AMD processor that sure looks like it could be a version of the chip used for the latest Xbox game consoles. Perhaps this is what’s happening to chips that didn’t quite make the cut. Rival chip maker Intel […]

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Lilbits 403: Microsoft release GW-Basic source code, hackers get an early crack at iOS 14

Microsoft’s GW-BASIC is a programming language that was released in 1983 and bundled with MS-DOS on early PCs. It was the first programming language many students and developers learned in the 80s, and nearly four decades later, Microsoft has released the source code. Available from Github, the code is being released “for historical reference/interest purposes,” […]

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PC Classic is like a $99 NES Classic… for DOS games

Small replicas of classic game systems have become surprisingly common over the past year or two. First there was the NES Classic. Then came the SNES Classic, the C64 Mini, the Neo Geo Mini, and the PlayStation Classic. But what about one of the most popular gaming devices ever? The PC? Yeah, there’s a $99 PC Classic […]

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Microsoft releases MS-DOS source code to GitHub

Four years after working with the Computer History Museum to release the source code for MS-DOS, Microsoft is “re-open-sourcing” its command line operating system from the ’80s. This time the company is making the source code for MS-DOS 1.25 and MS-DOS 2.0 available through GitHub. The company says the files are the same, but posting […]

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PC-MOS operating system goes open source (30 years after release)

These days if you’re using a desktop computer you’re probably running Windows, although there’s also a good chance you’re using OS X or maybe Chrome OS or one of a number of GNU/Linux distributions. But back in the 80s, it’s wasn’t really clear who the dominant players of the future would be. In 1987, a […]

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FreeDOS keeps classic computing alive (LPX Show interview)

It’s been more than two decades since Microsoft started to move away from MS-DOS with the launch of Windows 95. But a generation of computers users grew up with DOS in the 80s and 90s and there are thousands of programs and games developed for the platform. Many are still worth running. Some classic games […]