Really impressive, kudos to the authors!

What are some possible use cases for this tech aside from learning these ancient platforms in a modern environment?

A low impact, reliable virtual machine with a fixed spec. Sounds like a Silverlight killer. Maybe I should do all web programming in that thing instead of React or whatever is the fancy of the day.

Thanks to things like DOSBox, targeting DOS ensures your applications will run on almost any platform.

This seems great!

I just got some ancient laptop (386SX, 1.5MB RAM) running windows 3.11, and I was trying to find some modern programming launguage to hack on it. This seems perfect (as there are no modern C++11 compiler avalible for DOS[newest djgpp doesn't work properly at least in DOSBOX], no Python 3, no Java etc.

ps. Why there is 4MB requriment? Will it work with enough swap space?

From the requirements:

>> If you run it on real hardware you need at least a 80386 with 4MB. I recommend a Pentium class machine (>= 100MHz) with at least 32MB RAM. The example files run fine on an Athlon 1GHz and with 256MB RAM.

I think you would be frustrated using a 386SX

I recommend you to look here: https://github.com/andrewwutw/build-djgpp and https://github.com/tkchia/gcc-ia16

Using that DJGPP toolchain, I've have developed some DOS games in the last couple of years (one of those, using C++14 and EASTL, no less!).

Thank you.

Did you develop those games ON the DOS machine as well or just cross compile? I would love to see your games.

Does that gcc-ia16 works on 386SX (non 64bit CPU)?

"""These FreeDOS packages do not contain support for C++ or link-time optimization (LTO)."""

So there is working C++14 compiler able to run under DOS or not?

I really wish I could write Zig for DOS, but LLVM can't seem to handle putting out 16-bit segmented memory binaries. There is some hope as Zig introduces more support for alternative backends at least, but the point is that modern languages with cross compilers sadly eschew these historic platforms even while supporting esoteric embedded architectures.

There is some work with LLVM for DOS (32bit): https://github.com/Zirias/clang-libdos

Still, I would like to not only cross-compile for DOS, but to develop/compile on the DOS machine itself. I think that it might be actually possible to port Nim or V-lang compilers into DOS platform.

It would be perfect distraction-free development platform...

Might not be what you're after, but freebasic is a modern basic that works under DOS: https://www.freebasic.net/

No screenshots? :(

same thing here. this sounds like a really cool project. an action gif or screenshots would have been awesome.

This needs a video.