Would love to have one, if there isn't one around 😀

Would love that, too.

This would probably be the closest. Would probably make more sense to add a General Development forum under Magrathea tho.

here or on vcfed http://www.vcfed.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?1 … ter-Programming

I would really prefer a board here, which is dedicated to Development Software on old Systems (DOS, Win3.1, Win95...),
because there are so many topics you could talk about and experience you could share.
Starting by the different compilers, IDEs up to complete Engines or Software, which has been created.
Different Languages, common mistakes and work arounds.
The DOS board is a general board, so knowledge will get lost easily and the specific topics are more about the Hardware and not the Software.
It would also be good to have some software references, to know at which point what software was available.
Especially development software is hard to obtain these days, because just a minority used it, while the programs developed have been used and conserved by a bunch of people.
Also it could be a good place to present new software which was created for the old Systems.

I think too it would be a good idea.

Recently I installed Turbo C on my 286 project. I only have floppy drives so far, but it was awesome. That's where I learnt C first. Having a forum would be great. My bucket list still contains 'write your own adventure game engine'. And I would of course do it for retro PCs.

I'd be happy for a forum here for that. Somewhere on my To-Do list are a couple of ideas for DOS programming projects.

Sounds like a good idea to me, the development stuff could easily get lost in the general flow of discussions without their own dedicated forum.

Learn assembly language first. 🤣 It is DOS. Use MASM.

Iconclas wrote:

Use MASM.

MASM might be "period correct" but I'd really recommend NASM instead for all x86 assembly projects regardless of OS.

Depend on what kind of code one would make.

ASM is required for drivers / kernel / bios dev / reverse engineering.
But you can dev many things in Pascal, C, C++, Basic. To name a few !

capitaine wrote:

Depend on what kind of code one would make.

ASM is required for drivers / kernel / bios dev / reverse engineering.
But you can dev many things in Pascal, C, C++, Basic. To name a few !

Yes, I think it can be fun to do stuff in C / Pascal / Basic from the time, but after using modern variants of those languages, going back is a bit painful. Assembler on the other hand is simply what it is... Plus, if we want to push the boundaries of what has been achieved on those platforms, I think there is no way around assembler. And I really want to see people push the limits on a 8088 (see 8088 mph), 80286 or later machines. I think we haven't yet seen peak performance of the machines from the late 80s / early 90s.

I'd like to see this too. I have projects I'm working on and wouldn't mind tossing progress updates up somewhere, but there's not really a good place here to post those types of things.

I too would like to see something I can follow and learn from. My experience with ASM is trying to get some examples running from tutorials, but that's it. Really interested though for a looooong time.

I am also looking for developers forum.

My expirience:
I had develop tiny-basic 16-bit compiler for DOS in C (status: compiler - done, vm - done, graphics+fxsound library - done, I try to finalize fm-sound and develop more games for compiler-examples),
also have expirience in asm and C--.

There are 2 other active 'forums' that I know of:
1. FreeDOS developer's mailing list:
https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/mailman/freedos-devel/
2. DOS ain't dead forum
https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum.php

I'd like to second the motion for a DOS development forum.

I've been trying for years to make a new DOS platformer.

DosWorld wrote:

I had develop tiny-basic 16-bit compiler for DOS in C (status: compiler - done, vm - done, graphics+fxsound library - done, I try to finalize fm-sound and develop more games for compiler-examples),

This sounds interesting, is there a download link somewhere where I can try it out?

Is Usenet still a thing?