NT4 (or even 3.x, for that matter) works on a 8088? A 32 bit OS?

I really don't think so.

I don't think there is any OS that runs on the full range of computer hardware specified in the OP. Too many differences in architecture overall.

MS-DOS 3.3 is probably the only OS that would work at all on ALL those platforms.

If you specify a more narrow range, for instance 386-PIII, NT4 works I guess.

DOS 3.30 can read HD floppies right? How would you get a hard disk to work in a DOS 3.30 machine with only PCI slots?

Errius wrote:

DOS 3.30 can read HD floppies right? How would you get a hard disk to work in a DOS 3.30 machine with only PCI slots?

The OP didn't restrict the absence of hard drive, so maybe running on a floppy also counts?
There are P4 motherboards that come with ISA slot.

I'd have to say linux runing gnome 2.x and beryl/compiz. It barely qualifies, but holds a special place in my heart. I ran it on a P3-1GHz with a radeon 9250 that I bought just for that purpose. Realistically speaking I would say 2000, that was an absolutely amazing and rock solid OS. And if you want to go vintage I would pick CP/M simply because of the history of he company and Gary Kildall.

Linux on an 8088 is an interesting project.

There was something called ELKS which aimed to do just that, but it has subsequently died.

It seems you can install MINIX 2, theoretically:
https://minix1.woodhull.com/faq/xt360kdsk.html

That will run on all of the above? Well... DR-DOS, probably. I know 7.03 would at least /boot/ on a Tandy 1000SL. That's an 8086, not an 8088, but I suspect it would run on an 8088 too. I've also successfully booted it on an Opteron, so I suspect it would have no issues with a Pentium 4. I've certainly run it successfully on Slot A Athlons and Pentium IIIs.

Otherwise, the OS that holds a special place in my heart is probably still OS/2 Warp, though of course it won't run on anything older than a 386, and getting it working on anything newer than a Pentium Pro is a real challenge (though possible). When I got my first "real computer" as I thought of it - a 486DX4 - it came with a broken installation of Windows 3.1 on a broken installation of MS-DOS (many files were missing, nothing worked right). The only things I had to reinstall were my DR-DOS floppies and a copy of OS/2 Warp 3.0 that I'd found at a random nearby computer shop. I installed OS/2, and then DR-DOS in another partition for my games that didn't work in OS/2 (surprisingly few, actually), and I ran that for a few years. So in a sense, I still think of that as my first "Real OS" - what with its multitasking and whizzy features, and a GUI much slicker than the Windows 3.x one. To be frank, I don't think Windows really caught up to OS/2's desktop experience until at least XP - and some of that is just me having finally gotten used to Windows' warts by then. On Unix, I still prefer a somewhat more OS/2-like environment, with drag and drop, a launchpad/panel, etc.

That box eventually got Win95 for a few weeks - out that went, and back in OS/2 went, about the time it crashed on me and cost me a full day's work on a research paper. At some point in there I started messing with Linux (and FreeBSD) and discovered KDE (great stuff, KDE 1.0 was), but that's another story. Linux and Solaris may be what I use mostly today, plus Windows for games, but OS/2 still holds a special place in my memories.

Are there software that runs on 8086 but not 8088? I think the only difference is speed.

Norton SI 4.5 Advanced Edition Computing Index (CI) for:

8 MHz 8088: 1.7
8 MHz 8086: 1.9

I need to make it painfully clear again. I meant it ran on ONE of those CPUs. It does NOT have to run on all of them. It can run on one it can run on all. This means ANY x86 and x64 OS that was released from the 8086's inception to the last Pentium 4 going off the market is allowed.

Errius wrote:

Linux on an 8088 is an interesting project.

Especially since Linux requires virtual memory support.

Ampera wrote:

I need to make it painfully clear again. I meant it ran on ONE of those CPUs. It does NOT have to run on all of them. It can run on one it can run on all. This means ANY x86 and x64 OS that was released from the 8086's inception to the last Pentium 4 going off the market is allowed.

Then what's the point of bringing up these processors? Just ask people what' are their favorite x86/x86-64 retro OSes.

lazibayer wrote:

Ampera wrote:

I need to make it painfully clear again. I meant it ran on ONE of those CPUs. It does NOT have to run on all of them. It can run on one it can run on all. This means ANY x86 and x64 OS that was released from the 8086's inception to the last Pentium 4 going off the market is allowed.

Then what's the point of bringing up these processors? Just ask people what' are their favorite x86/x86-64 retro OSes.

Because I wish to exclude operating systems like Vista, 7, 8, 10, etc. Hindsight is 20/20.

Ampera wrote:

Errius wrote:

Linux on an 8088 is an interesting project.

Especially since Linux requires virtual memory support.

Regular Linux started with 32bit from the very beginning kernel version 0.01. There is one 16bit derivative, ELKS, that is targeted for 8086 systems. In an extreme case some one managed to boot Linux on a 8bit RISC microcontroller with the help of self-written ARMv5 emulator.

Is there any advantage on a 8088/8086 system running DOS 4 over DOS 3.3?

lazibayer wrote:

Regular Linux started with 32bit from the very beginning kernel version 0.01. There is one 16bit derivative, ELKS, that is targeted for 8086 systems. In an extreme case some one managed to boot Linux on a 8bit RISC microcontroller with the help of self-written ARMv5 emulator.

Interesting that ELKS restarted. I was not aware of that.

Anyway, the best option for UNIX (like) on first generation x86 processors is MINIX 2.

Another one that can likely run on all those processors: CP/M-86 and derivatives.

ELKS runs well on my XT with 512k of RAM, not the last version but one of the earlier, 0.1.0 or 0.1.4, forgot which, running from a 360k floppy disk.
Haven't tried Minix2 yet, something I want to do eventually.
QNX also had a version running on 8088 cpus.