45 Year Old DOS on a New Intel CPU Without Emulation

DOS can still run on Intel and AMD CPUs! How? It's the power of backwards compatibility with the x86 architecture. Since the days of Intel's original 8086 microprocessor, the x86 instruction set has certainly grown, but those old 16-bit instructions from the 80s are still supported by even the latest CPUs released by Intel and AMD. So what does it take to get DOS running a brand-new CPU? Merely a boot disk and a BIOS that has legacy support. Even the first version of PC-DOS for the IBM PC (1981) still works fine, just no BASIC available.
I'm looking forward to ARM and RISC-V competition, but the x86 architecture is still the king today, and it doesn't seem like there is any real competition, at least in the desktop PC space.

Special thanks to IceWhale Tech for sending over their ZimaBlade single board computer. You can check their board out below:
ZimaBlade Official Shop: https://bit.ly/4cKwZ4y
ZimaBlade on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3LzV4Pw
ZimaBlade Personal NAS: https://bit.ly/4dbg6Qa

Sources:
1980s PC sales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_...

x86 Operating Modes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#...

Rufus boot disk maker: https://rufus.ie/en/

UNebootin boot disk maker (used to create the PC-DOS boot disk): https://unetbootin.github.io/

PC-DOS disk: https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/s...

x86-S: https://hackaday.com/2023/05/21/intel...


Interesting article about FreeDOS: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/...