=== Introduction:

This archive is a snapshot of my 8088 development box:  An IBM 5160 (the
original PC/XT) upgraded with an EMS board and an IDE drive.  I'm making this
snapshot available for anyone who obtains an old computer (386 and earlier) and
would like to play around with it.  Everything for tinkering is included,
including (but nowhere near limited to) tasm and a86 for assembler development,
various sound and graphics programs, utilities for hard disk and floppy disk
formatting, troubleshooting, and defragmentation, FastLynx for transferring
files over serial/parallel cable, TSRs like nnansi for massivly speeding up
text screen updates and ncache2 for the "best disk cache in the world", PC
speaker sound programs that play multiple notes at the same time, like Music
Construction Set and Pianoman, applications like TaskTimer for managing your
time and The Running Program for getting in shape, programs to help interface
to the Internet (I personally use the FTP server to get files on and off the
machine), and of course games.  It's my hope that you will be able to spend
hours and hours exploring what's here and have a good time.  And, if you poke
around enough, you'll find the (buggy) source code to the 8088 Corruption
player as well as my (non-buggy) CGA graphics library.

=== Snapshot Notes:

This isn't some archive or compilation, it's an actual snapshot of a running
8088 machine with CGA.  This means everything in this archive works just fine
on the real hardware, as it wouldn't be on my 8088's hard drive if it didn't!

You've also probably noticed that all of this would never fit onto a 10MB MFM drive -- heck, it won't fit onto a 100MB drive!  You are meant to uncompress this archive on a modern machine and then move things over as needed.

I've also UNcompressed most if not all of the .exes and .coms if they were
previously compressed with exepack, lhexe, or pklite.  This was done for two
reasons:  1. They load a heck of a lot quicker on 4.77MHz machines, and 2. some
of the compressors had obscure bugs that crashed the machine -- unpacking them
made those problems go away.

=== Some of the more interesting, rare tidbits:

MIPS		Benchmarking program.  Much more accurate than Norton SI.
NCACHE2		The best disk cache program ever made for DOS.
NNANSI		ANSI driver *and* massively speeds up text writes
FastTrax	The best disk defragmenter ever made for DOS.  Use "ftfaster"
		if the screen access is too slow for you (I patched it to
		remove unnecessary CGA screen "snow" checking)
FastLynx	The best serial/parallel cable transfer program ever made for
		DOS.
RAR v2.50	The last version made to run on an 8088 or 80286.  Extremely
		versatile and crunches smaller than ZIP every time (and ARJ too
		if you use Solid mode, but be prepared for longer compression
		times)
Respro		For managing TSRs (including disabling and unloading them)
cboot		For un-crashing crashed progams or gracefully rebooting.
		(respro and cboot conflict; load one or the other, not both)
Fractint v20	Fractal generation program.  One of the very best, and fastest,
		for DOS.  If you don't have a math-coprocessor, don't fret;
		Mandelbrots are done with 32-bit integer code and are quite
		fast.
BASIC		Contains BASIC compilers
BP		Borland Pascal, the fastest development environment for DOS.
SnatchIt	For dumping copy-protected 5.25"/360K and 3.5"/720K
		copy-protected games to image files, and then back onto blank
		diskettes (please write-protect your originals to be safe!)
chunk		Program to break large files into pieces; great for
		transferring large files between machines via floppy disks

=== Games:

A special note about the games:  I tried to pick the best-performing games for
this snapshot, ones that are fun to play even on the lowest of the
low-performing PCs (ie. any 8088 computer).  Hopefully you'll agree.  I've even
included a special games directory called TECH For games that are truly a
technical masterpiece, achieving some truly amazing graphics, speed, or sound
for such a slow machine and limited graphics card.  Some of the best 3D
graphics on a slow machine include Jet, Die Hard, Deep Space, and Vaxine.  Some
of the best CGA graphics tricks include Bob Wilder and others.  Some of the
best sound comes from Mach 3 and Space Racer.  They may not always be fun to
play, but they sure are hard to beat from a programming perspective!

=== Missing:

The only thing NOT included is my operating system and/or boot disks.  This is
for several reasons, the two most important being 1. Every machine has
different requirements that should be individually addressed, and 2. so you
don't inadvertently make your own machine non-bootable by restoring one of my
OS files over yours.  If you're curious what I personally run, my XT runs PC
DOS 2000 with "ndos" (the licensed version of 4dos that comes with Norton
Utilities) as a command shell.

-- Trixter, 20060828

PS: If you're wondering where the spreadsheet/word processor/database is, they
aren't included.  I don't "play" with office applications; they're not "fun" to
"play" with :-)