The first tagged release of os8088. Four raw floppy images, built from 698b587 and booted before publishing.
What is new since the last published build (v1.0.20260726)
- Optional double buffering (#22), switchable at runtime from the Control Panel's new Display page. Off by default on every machine — a 256K machine draws straight to VRAM as before and can never leave that path. At 500K or more of conventional memory the kernel allows a four-plane back buffer at segment
0x4000, flushed a dirty rectangle at a time when the drawing lock drops. Two things keep it affordable: while everything on screen is black or white all four planes are identical, so the flush writes one plane and lets the Map Mask fan it out; and the transient XOR overlays (drag outlines, menu highlights) bypass the buffer entirely. - A graphical boot splash (#21): a spinning 8088 over a progress bar.
- 640KB boot targets for QEMU and 86Box (#20) —
make run-640andmake xt-640. - Repository housekeeping: a CONTRIBUTING guide (#19), SECURITY.md (#18), CODEOWNERS (#17), and a tracked gitleaks pre-commit hook (#16).
Note Pad is no longer on the File menu. It moved out of the kernel and onto the software floppy as the NOTEPAD package — open File > Disk and double-click it. The File menu is now Clock, Bounce, Disk, Close Window.
Size
| Kernel image | 16,281 bytes (was 14,376) |
| Image + .bss | 39,871 of the 40,960 ceiling — 1,089 bytes below the 0xA000 program pool |
| Source | 12,848 lines of real-mode NASM across 20 kernel modules |
The images
| file | geometry | for |
|---|---|---|
os8088.img |
1.44MB, 18 spt | boot disk for QEMU |
os8088-360.img |
360KB, 9 spt | boot disk for 86Box and period XT hardware |
apps.img |
1.44MB | software disk: MINES, HELLO, NOTEPAD |
apps360.img |
360KB | the same three packages, XT geometry |
The boot disk goes in A:, the software disk in B:. Downloads and checksums are also at https://os8088.com/download/ once the accompanying site release is merged.