awesome-dos

DOS dev tools

A curated collection of resources and tools for developing DOS applications.

Curated list of references for development of DOS applications.

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Awesome DOS / Development tools
bcc - Bruce's Compiler Bruce's C compiler is a simple C compiler that produces 8086 assembler for tiny/small memory models
DJGPP DJ Delorie's complete 32-bit C/C++ development environment for Intel 80386. Used for Quake
GCC IA-16 toolchain A 16-bit counterpart to DJGPP, a GCC-based toolchain for developing 16-bit (8086 to 80286, a.k.a. IA-16) DOS applications, currently maintained by TK Chia
Open Watcom Formerly commercial C/C++ development environment for 16- and 32-bit DOS and Windows. The current official version is 1.9. A GitHub fork is also available. Used for Doom I-II, Warcraft I-II, Duke Nukem 3D, Full Throttle, Dark Forces and Retro City Rampage

Awesome DOS / Development tools / Open Watcom
documentation The is very valuable in order to understand working with both version 1.9 and the V2 fork
Arch Wiki page

Awesome DOS / Development tools
Open Watcom V2 985 15 days ago GitHub fork which is actively maintained and is ported to 64-bit Windows and Linux
Turbo C 2.01 C IDE and compiler from Borland first released in 1987
Turbo C++ 1.01 C++ IDE and compiler from Borland released in 1991
Turbo C++ 3.0 C++ IDE and compiler from Borland released in 1992

Awesome DOS / Development tools / Turbo C++ 3.0
Online version.

Awesome DOS / Development tools
DIV Games Studio 2 IDE to develop DOS games in 2d, mode 7 and 3d. Released in 1998

Awesome DOS / Development tools / DIV Games Studio 2
Online version.

Awesome DOS / Development tools
T3X A small, portable, procedural, block-structured, recursive, almost typeless, and to some degree object-oriented programming language by Nils M. Holm
SmallerC Portable self-hosting C compiler capable of producing executables for a number of platforms, including real and protected mode DOS programs, by Alexei A. Frounze
Small-C Toolkit A self-hosting Small-C Compiler Toolkit for DOS(8086) with: K&R C Compiler, Make, Linker, Assembler. First released in 1982 by Jim E. Hendrix

Awesome DOS / Development tools / Memory managers
386MAX 118 over 2 years ago Memory manager for DOS PCs with 386 or higher CPUs, . Source code was released in June 2022 on GitHub with GPL-3.0 license

Awesome DOS / Development tools / Scripting languages and interpreters for DOS
DOjS 861 29 days ago JavaScript programming environment for MS-DOS, FreeDOS or any DOS-based Windows (like 95, 98, ME)
Lua for DOS Online demo of Lua 5.3.5, compiled for MS-DOS on the Intel 80486 processor
Micropython for FreeDOS 25 about 8 years ago FreeDOS ad-hoc module for
perldos Perl for DOS
PythonD Python for DOS, including multi-threading, networking and OpenGL

Awesome DOS / Tutorials and programming resources / History
The Life of MS-DOS by Brendan Byers History of the DOS family including CP/M, Q-DOS/86-DOS, MS-DOS and PC-DOS. Article also includes a diagram of the timeline and family tree of DOS operating systems

Awesome DOS / Tutorials and programming resources / Compiling
80x86 16-bit Compiling How-to by Alexei A. Frounze 16-bit compilation tutorial for Borland/Turbo C/C++ and Open Watcom. Goes into depth of memory addressing and memory models
32bit DOS development with Open Watcom 32-bit compilation tutorial for Open Watcom
How to build DOS COM files with GCC by Chris Wellons Build process of Chris Wellons's DOS Defender game using DJGPP. Goal was to create a 32-bit 80386 COM executable

Awesome DOS / Tutorials and programming resources / General
David Brackeen - 256-Color VGA Programming in C Tutorial series to learn how to create graphics on DOS
640k Really is Enough for Anyone by Robert W. Oliver II Short article about getting Turbo C running on FreeDOS and moving a pixel around
Just keeping it real... old skool style - Scali's OpenBlog Blog post about Scali's journey of doing CGA, EGA and VGA programming
Alex Russell's Dos Game Programming in C for Beginners DOS game programming tutorial series including a primer on C, graphics, animation, input handling and collision detection. This series contains a tutorial for making . Last chapter contains full source code of a Break Out game on DOS
The Artevida Game Programming Tutorials Kevin Matz's almost book-length treatment of DOS system programming and VGA programming fundamentals using C/C++ and 80x86 assembly. Unfortunately it is incomplete and was abandoned since 2001
PC Game Programmer's Encyclopedia Collection of guides covering assembly, sound (Sound Blaster, Gravis UltraSound, PC Speaker, GameBlaster, Adlib), input, memory (EMS, XMS, DMA Transfers), PIT, VGA, SVGA, algorithms and file formats
The Art of Demomaking by flipcode Series from 1999 that introduces to graphics programming under DOS. The home site contains other late 90s/early 2000s game programming articles as well
Programming MS-DOS with Power - DOS Programming, Undocumented DOS, and DOS Secrets System programming tutorials like disk handling, interrupts, inputs, sound, graphics
Programmer's Heaven (InfoMagic)(March 1997) CD-ROM Source code and files for the following topics: MS-DOS, networking, C, C++, Pascal, Visual Basic, Delphi, 3D, PC speaker, Soundblaster, Gravis Ultrasound, MIDI and many more

Awesome DOS / Tutorials and programming resources / DOS API
bios.h header documentation by Digital Mars API documentation for routines accessing BIOS operations directly (disk operations, BIOS keyboard, printer, time, memory, serial, interrupts)
Part 1 dos.h header documentation by Digital Mars - API documentation of functions for interfacing with the DOS operating system itself

Awesome DOS / Tutorials and programming resources / Interrupts
Ralph Brown's Interrupt List - HTML version List of every documented and undocumented interrupt call known, accessible through search, categories and interrupt numbers

Awesome DOS / Tutorials and programming resources / Interrupts / Ralph Brown's Interrupt List - HTML version
Ralph Brown's website Original in downloadable .zip files from

Awesome DOS / Tutorials and programming resources / Memory
A look back at memory models in 16-bit MS-DOS Raymond Chen's explanation of segmented memory, including near- and far pointers

Awesome DOS / Tutorials and programming resources / Video
Values for standard video mode List of all known video modes including BIOS interrupt numbers, text/pixel resolution, number of colors and video memory addresses
Color Graphics Adapter: Notes Document describing the hardware, memory map, register I/O and hardware clones of the IBM's original CGA
VGA Hardware - OSDev wiki Hardware guide for VGA cards that is also relevant for modern graphics cards including NVidia and ATI
Graphical programming in Assembly (DOS) A VGA programming tutorial that also shows the list of video modes (text, CGA, EGA, VGA, SVGA) in a table at the beginning
VGA programming lessons VGA programming tutorial series in Pascal and Assembly
DOS Super VGA / VESA programming notes - by Myles VESA article with history at the beginning and short mention of the VESA VBE standard, but unfortunately the example codes aren't even available through Wayback Machine
VESA Video Modes - OSDev wiki Tutorial about querying VESA modes
DJGPP VESA guide Tutorial about querying VESA modes
High-res high-speed VESA tutorial Series of tutorials that include drawing pixels in VESA mode (protected or real)
C code sample for drawing in VESA 2.0 mode Just code listing for drawing an ellipse in VESA mode

Awesome DOS / Tutorials and programming resources / Sound
Programming Sound Cards CD A 1995 CD-ROM containing source code for Adlib, Gravis, Pro-Audio, Roland and Sound Blaster sound cards. The description for the folders on the CD-ROM is listed
Making some noise with the PC speaker! - by Mark Feldman Very short tutorial on using the PIT for generating PC speaker frequency
Frequencies of Musical Notes Freqency table usable to parameterize the PC speaker
Sound Programming with PC Speaker - Chapter 23 of A to Z of C PC speaker programming chapter of the "A to Z of C" book with source code
Yamaha YM3812 (OPL2) sound chip Wikipedia article Best starting point to learn about the OPL2 sound chip besides 8-bit guy's YouTube video
The Ad Lib Music Synthesizer Card Programming Guide - by Tero Töttö Reference of OPL2 operations and registers
Programmer's Guide to the Yamaha YMF 262/OPL3 FM Music Synthesizer Reverse-engineered reference on OPL3
Sound Blaster 16 Programming Document 3.5 by Ethan Brodsky Programming the Sound Blaster 16 DSP CT1341 chip for recording and playback of digitized audio

Awesome DOS / Tutorials and programming resources / Sound / Sound Blaster 16 Programming Document 3.5 by Ethan Brodsky
GameDev.net archive version 3.4 on

Awesome DOS / Tutorials and programming resources / Sound
Soundblaster Programming Information v0.90 List of Sound Blaster models and registers

Awesome DOS / Tutorials and programming resources / Other
Table of DOSBox cyclecounts according to processor types A table for setting the appropriate DOSBox cycle count according to CPU types (IBM XT 88, 286, 386, 486, Pentium I, Pentium II). Comes handy when you are developing a DOS game and want to simulate the environment where you intend to execute it

Awesome DOS / Books / Free
Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D - by Fabien Sanglard Fabien Sanglard's walkthrough on the game engine architecture of id Software's Wolfenstein 3D on the IBM PC's hardware. Contains forewords by John Carcmack, Tom Hall and John Romero
Game Engine Black Book: Doom - by Fabien Sanglard Fabien Sanglard's walkthrough on the game engine architecture of id Software's original Doom on Intel 486 system and game console ports. Contains forewords by John Carcmack, Dave Taylor and John Romero
A to Z of C - a book on C/DOS programming by K. Joseph Wesley and R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah Non-profit book on programming in C on DOS. DOS system programming starts from Part II
Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book Special Edition Collection of Michael Abrash's Dr. Dobb's Journal graphics programming articles and his work on the graphics subsystem of Quake ( )

Awesome DOS / Books / Paid
Tricks of the Game-Programming Gurus - by Andre Lamothe, John Ratcliff and Denise Tyler Comprehensive DOS game development book about starting out, creating 2D and basic 3D graphics, I/O and game algorithms

Awesome DOS / Videos
Why DOS Was (and Is) a Thing - FreeDOS Historical talk starting from Unix, going through CPM, DOS 1.x, DOS 2.x, DOS 3.x, DOS 4.x, DOS 6.x, Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and ending with FreeDOS
CGA Graphics - Not as bad as you thought! - by 8-bit Guy History and technical details about IBM's CGA system. Also describes 4-color RGBI and 16-color Composite modes
How Oldschool Sound/Music worked - by 8-bit Guy Video about PC speaker, FM synthesizers in NES and Commodore 64, Yamaha OPL chip in AdLib and Sound Blaster sound cards, PCM samples and MOD music
Let's Code - MS DOS - by root42 DOS programming tutorial series including VGA, SoundBlaster and VGA Mode X
LGR - Evolution of PC Audio - As Told by Secret of Monkey Island Comparison of playing the intro theme of Secret of Monkey Island through PC speaker, IBM PCjr/Tandy, AdLib, Game Blaster, Roland LAPC-1/MT-32, Gravis Ultrasound, Roland SCC-1 MIDI, SB16 Waveblaster/AWE32 and CD quality digital audio
Porting Retro City Rampage to MS-DOS: From PS4 to 1.44MB Floppy GDC talk. Brian Provinciano's presentation on porting Retro City Rampage from PlayStation 4 to DOS. Topics include optimization, using interrupts, timing, PC speaker sound, joystick, memory management and fixed-point math
DOS Executables Explained - Nostalgia Nerd Video about DOS executable formats including , and
Why does DOS use 8.3 Filenames? - Nostalgia Nerd Video about the 8.3 limitation of filenames under DOS, FAT partitioning scheme, NTFS, VFAT, FatGo, and
What is DOS Protected Mode? / DOS Extenders- Nostalgia Nerd Video about how PC memory looks like, conventional memory, extender memory and reasons for the need of DOS Protected Mode Interface (DPMI) and extenders like DOS/4GW
MS-DOS has been Open-Sourced! We Build and Run it! - Dave's Garage Former Microsoft employee David Plummer tells stories about development of MS-DOS and compiles MS-DOS 4.00 source code which has been open-sourced by Microsoft

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS operating systems
MS-DOS 30,757 7 months ago GitHub repository of the original source code for MS-DOS v1.25, v2.0 and v4.0, open-sourced by Microsoft
FreeDOS FreeDOS is an open source DOS-compatible operating system that you can use to play classic DOS games, run legacy business software, or develop embedded systems. Any program that works on MS-DOS should also run on FreeDOS

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS libraries
Allegro 4.2 Game development library for DOS, Windows and Linux
LoveDOS 674 over 7 years ago A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua. API based on a subset of the LÖVE API
DOS-VGA-Game 13 over 7 years ago Marco A. Marrero's DOS VGA/hardware library implemented in assembly and Turbo Pascal
DIGPAK sound drivers source code 34 almost 3 years ago Original source code for the DIGPAK sound drivers uploaded to GitHub by John W. Ratcliff

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games
DOS Defender 130 about 1 year ago Christopher Wellons's x86 real mode DOS Asteroids clone created as an entry for Lundum Dare #31
Dungeons of Noudar 53 about 2 years ago First-person 2.5D dungeon-crawler on protected mode. Written in C++, includes software rendering, fixed point math, test coverage and sound (PC speaker, Adlib, OPL2LPT)
Emeritus Pong Pong clone for DOS, Windows and Linux. Uses PC speaker for sound on DOS
Floppy Bird 916 over 4 years ago Flappy Bird clone written in 16 bit assembly. Not a DOS program, but a PC-Booter application instead (although it's also possible to build a COM executable for DOS)
George M. Tzoumas's collection of MS-DOS games and utilities Turbo Pascal with few games in C and C++. Games include Nibbles, Connect Four, Ms Pacman clone and two arcade/platform games. One of them (ra2) was written using Allegro. Utilities are all written in Turbo Pascal, these include game system routines, file and disk utilities and terminate-and-stay-resident programs (TSR)
Gold Mine Run! Platformer written in C using DJGPP
Gridfighter 3D '80s style arcade shooter written in Quickbasic. Also the very first known DOS game that supports Oculus Rift VR headset

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games / Gridfighter 3D
GitHub repository 4 almost 6 years ago

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games
Hangman Hangman clone written in Basic. Runs on at least 80286 processors and uses EGA graphics
Magenta's Maze 3D maze game using CGA graphics with algebra as theme

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games / Magenta's Maze
Source code download link

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games
Mario Super Mario Bros clone written in Turbo Pascal
NetHack 3,004 8 days ago Descendant of the original rougelike game first released in 1987 available on multiple platforms
Piskworks 8 almost 4 years ago Gomoku clone written in C. Works on DOS, ZX Spectrum, ZX81, ZX80, APPLE1, AS400 and Windows
Plutonium Caverns 10 over 5 years ago Overhead puzzle game written in C. Web version uses to embed DOSBox into HTML5. However, the original executable is also downloadable and buildable with Open Watcom
Ptakovina 20 over 1 year ago Tetris clone written in C. Runs on DOS, Unix/Linux, ZX Spectrum and Windows
sudoku86 Sudoku clone written in C. Runs on 8086/8088 CPU, uses CGA, MCGA or VGA graphics and uses a mouse
Tetris Tetris clone written in assembly

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games / Tetris
Source code download link

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games
Towers of Hanoi 4 about 9 years ago puzzle game written in Turbo Pascal. Originally released in 1996
x86 pong 9 about 6 years ago Text-mode Pong clone written in C. Runs as PC-Booter game and under DOS
zmiy Text-mode Snake clone written in C. Runs on 8086 DOS
Cyberdogs Top-down 2D shooter playing as a mercenary to earn money. Written in Turbo Pascal. Supports two player mode

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games / Cyberdogs
Source code download link
C-Dogs Sequel to the original Cyberdogs. Ronny Wester, the original creator no longer maintains the website for the original C-Dogs, but multiple ports exists, including

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games
Abuse Sci-fi side-scrolling platform game. Regarded as an innovative cult classic by most people. Supports SVGA mode up to 1280x1024 resolution. Written in C, the architecture includes a Lisp-scripting engine

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games / Abuse
Source code download link

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games
Beneath a Steel Sky Point-and-click adventure game set in a dystopian future. Written in assembly

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games / Beneath a Steel Sky
Source code download link

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games
Catacomb 141 over 10 years ago 2D top-down shooter developed by Softdisk (later becoming id Software). Supports EGA and CGA graphics. Written in Turbo Pascal and assembly
Catacomb 3D 188 over 10 years ago First-person shooter in fantasy setting developed by Softdisk (later becoming id Software). Features pseudo-3D graphics with raycasting technique. Supports EGA graphics. Written in C and assembly. Compiled with Borland C++ 3.1
Commander Keen in Keen Dreams 1,928 about 10 years ago Side-scrolling platform game developed by id Software. Keen Dreams is the Commander Keen game created between Keen 3 and Keen 4 (often considered "Keen 3.5"), but was not widely released. Written in C and assembly
Descent 387 about 6 years ago First sci-fi FPS/space shooter to feature entirely true 3D graphics. Written in C and assembly
Descent II 87 about 12 years ago Sequel to Descent. Written in C and assembly
Doom 14,366 6 months ago Sci-fi FPS developed by id Software where you fight demons from hell on Mars. The DOS-specific code for Doom could not be published because of a dependency to the licensed DMX sound library, hence why it's cleaned up and only the Linux source is there. However, the Heretic and Hexen projects contain the original DOS code in a way where DMX-related code is removed
Duke Nukem 3D FPS developed by Apogee featuring the iconic character Duke Nukem. Written in C. Compiled with Watcom C/C++ 10.0

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games / Duke Nukem 3D
Source code download link

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games
Heretic 44 over 11 years ago Dark fantasy FPS running on id Software's Doom engine
Hexen: Beyond Heretic 34 over 11 years ago Indirect sequel to Heretic

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games / Hexen: Beyond Heretic
SourceForge link Original for Heretic/Hexen

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games
Hovertank 3D 240 over 10 years ago FPS developed by id Software. Features pseudo-3D graphics with raycasting technique, before Catacomb 3D and Wolfeinstein 3D. Written in C and assembly
Quake 4,929 5 months ago FPS developed by id Software set in a fully 3D world. Written in C. Compiled with DJGPP for DOS

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games / Quake
Quake Engine Code Review series Code analysis by Fabien Sanglard

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games
Rise of the Triad: Dark War 86 about 6 years ago FPS developed by Apogee. It was developed as a follow-up to Wolfenstein 3D, but was altered and became a standalone game instead. Uses a heavily modified Wolfenstein 3D engine. Written in C
Sopwith Side-scrolling shoot 'em up created by David L. Clark in 1984. The game involves piloting a Sopwith biplane, attempting to bomb enemy buildings while avoiding fire from enemy planes and various other obstacles

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games / Sopwith
MaiZure's Projects - Decoded: Sopwith Code analysis by MaiZure

Awesome DOS / Source code / Open source DOS games
Wolfenstein 3D 2,194 almost 13 years ago FPS developed by id Software set in the Nazi German prison Castle Wolfenstein. Features pseudo-3D graphics with raycasting technique. Written in C and assembly

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