os8088 v1.0.20260813
Files come off a floppy about ten times faster than when this work started. Measured on a real IBM 5150: a 16KB file took 8.35 seconds to read and now takes 0.82, which is 2.7 times faster than the last release on its own. A machine with two graphics cards can put one desktop across two monitors. A floppy this system cannot read can be formatted so that it can, and a program that finishes something now says so in one line in the menu bar.
Download and checksums: https://os8088.com/download/ — the full notes are at https://os8088.com/releases/
Reading a file is ten times faster than it was (#73)
A floppy spins at 300 revolutions a minute, so a read that misses its moment waits a fifth of a second for the sector to come round again. The system used to ask the BIOS for one sector at a time and pay that wait over and over: a 16KB file was 148 sector reads in 34 separate requests. It now asks for a whole track at a time and keeps what it read, so the same file is 18 sectors in 2 requests. On a real IBM 5150 that file went from 8.35 seconds to 0.82 — 19,883 bytes a second, which is 1.66 times faster than the quickest the machine's own ROM can read that drive, because a second read of something already in memory never touches the disk.
Two monitors, one desktop (#73)
A machine with a Hercules card and a CGA card in it has two monitors and until now used one. Control Panel › Display › Desktop puts a single desktop across both. Windows move between the screens, and a window sitting over the join is drawn in two pieces, one on each. You say whether the second monitor is to the right or below.
The default is Single: the system can tell that a second card is fitted, but nothing can tell whether a monitor is plugged into it, and extending onto a card with nothing attached would put half the desktop — and the pointer you would need to undo it — on glass that does not exist.
There is a page about it, with a photograph of it running: https://os8088.com/spotlight/dual-display/
Format a floppy (#73)
A disk that reads perfectly but holds no filesystem this system knows used to be a dead end: the Disk window said No os8088 disk and there was nothing to be done about it. File › Format Disk... makes one. It works the size out from the disk and the drive and asks before it touches anything — Format A: as 360K? Enter=yes Esc=no — then writes the boot sector, both copies of the file table and the root directory: 12 sectors on a 360KB disk, 33 on a 1.44MB one. It does not rewrite the sector headings, so it cannot turn a disk the drive can read into one nothing can. The menu item greys itself when the disk in the drive is already one the system can read.
One line in the menu bar when something finishes (#73)
Saved NOTES.TXT appears at the right-hand end of the menu bar for three seconds and then goes. Five programs had each written their own version of that message and no two agreed on where it went, how long it lasted or who cleared it. Note Pad's came back every time you dragged the window, which read as the file being loaded a second time and was reported as exactly that; Paint's sat on the picture and cost a redraw of the artwork to hide. The menu bar has one piece of code that draws it and no window can ever cover it, so a message there needs none of that machinery.
Timer, Bounce and Disk are in one place (#73)
The three built-in programs were on the File menu on the desktop and on a menu called Special inside a Disk window — the same three commands in two different places, depending on which window happened to be in front. They are on one Builtins menu now, and both bars carry it. Restart moved to the menu under the chip logo, which every program has, so it can be reached from anywhere rather than only from the desktop. The clock is called Timer now, on the menu and in its title bar.
The hard-disk driver shrinks when it is only being a disk (#73)
The driver was two programs in one file: the half that reads and writes the disk, and the half that draws the Control Panel pages for partitioning, formatting and installing. Only the first needs to be in memory while you work. They are separate files now. The resident half is 6,657 bytes in a 7KB claim where the pair together took 15KB, and the tool half is loaded when you open the page and dropped when you leave it. A machine with Hard Drive ticked reads 14 sectors at boot instead of 29.
Frotz opens a story that is in a folder (#76)
Double-clicking a story file inside INFOCOM, CLASSIC or MODERN answered That story is not on this disk. Every story on the floppy make zdisk builds is in one of those three, so double-clicking never worked on the disk anyone actually has — the interpreter looked in the folder it was loaded from rather than the one the story is in. The workaround in the last release's notes, opening Frotz first and then File › Open Story..., is no longer needed.
Worth knowing
Three menu items moved. Timer (which used to be called Clock), Bounce and Disk are on a new Builtins menu, on the desktop and inside a Disk window both. Restart is under the chip logo at the left of the menu bar now, in every program.
Two monitors are off until you ask for them. On a machine with both a Hercules and a CGA card, open Control Panel › Display and set Desktop to Extend, then say whether the second screen is to the right or below. The setting is kept on the system disk with the others. There is an 86Box machine for it in the source tree: make xt-multimon.
Frotz is still not on these images. It needs story files that are not this project's to give away, so it ships as a floppy you build yourself: make zdisk in a source checkout.
The build
Kernel image 86,118 bytes, up from 80,486. The kernel's own segment holds 60,107 of the 65,536 bytes it can, leaving 5,429. 158,739 lines of assembly across 35 kernel modules.