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For 8086 there's ELKS with networking support and it might run biggie stuff as Nethack/Slashem.

Frotz, vi, and the rest run OFC.

Networking sshot: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ghaerr/elks/master/Screens...

Telnetting to a BBS: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ghaerr/elks/master/Screens...



Oh yes there's been some ELKS activity lately.

Does it support the 286's 16-bit protected mode at all?

286 protected mode has the 8086-style 16-bit addresses and segmentation. But with virtualization and protection.

Not very many operating systems made use of it. The x86 world skipped over it directly from 8086 real mode to 32-bit paging.

Edit: to answer my own question it seems the recent branch dropped 286 protected mode support

https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/pull/235


Windows 3.0 and 3.1 were very popular and made use of the 286's protected mode.




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