# adriancable/8086tiny

Official repository for 8086tiny: a tiny PC emulator/virtual machine

Repository: https://github.com/adriancable/8086tiny
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/8086tiny
Language: Assembly
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2022-09-07T17:43:45+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4598, "days_push": 1456, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1113, forks 221 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:38.070980+00:00)

## What it is
8086tiny is a tiny, MIT-licensed PC XT-compatible emulator/virtual machine written in C, with fully-commented source under 25K. It emulates an 8086 CPU plus XT peripherals (keyboard, floppy/hard disk, clock, audio, Hercules/CGA graphics) and is portable to nearly any little-endian machine.

## Use cases
- emulate an old PC XT to run DOS-era software
- run legacy PC games like Alley Cat on modern hardware
- run Windows 3.0 or AutoCAD in an emulator
- embed a tiny x86 emulator on a microcontroller or Raspberry Pi
- study a small, readable x86 emulator codebase
- extend an emulator with new instructions or peripherals

## When to choose
- you need an extremely small, portable 8086 emulator
- you want to run classic DOS/XT-era software or games
- you want a minimal codebase to learn or fork for custom emulation

## When to avoid
- you need modern x86-64 emulation or newer instruction sets like Pentium
- you need high performance or modern peripherals like mouse support out of the box
- you want a polished, feature-complete VM with active feature development

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: maintenance
- function: simulation
- domain: developer-tools, operating-systems, cross-platform
- platform: windows, cross-platform, cli
- tags: pc-emulator, 8086, virtual-machine, retro-computing, tiny-emulator, linux, macos, android, ios

## Member repositories
- adriancable/8086tiny (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:38.070980+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:42:34.064551+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/adriancable/8086tiny (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:38.070980+00:00, sha 28475064cf59)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.