DOS ain't dead

testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator (Emulation)

posted by Rugxulo , Usono, 29.04.2026, 05:41

I'm on the wrong machine right now, so I don't have precise benchmarks. And I tested the emulator under OpenBSD (i386) on a jump drive. Note that I'm more interested in estimated 8086 speed. Obviously "native" speed is less noticeable.

In order of fastest to slowest assemblers I tested:

* A86 (super fast) -- 5 secs
* as86 (from bcc/dev86) -- 50 secs.
* a72 / ra -- 1min20 or 1min40
* wasmr or jwasmr -- 4min
* mininasm or tinyasm -- 5min
* nasm16 -- 6min

In other words, I wanted to know what would be ultra slow on a real 8086, for academic curiosity.

I also tested a few compilers and interpreters. Unsurprisingly, things like AWK and REXX are pretty slow compared to native compiled code (e.g. Turbo Pascal).

* https://github.com/davidly/ntvdm

AFAIK, this is only 8086 / MS-DOS 3.3 emulation but "mostly" easy to use via cmdline. (No extra data files needed.)

Complete thread:

• testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - Rugxulo, 29.04.2026, 05:41 (Emulation)
  • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - Oso2k, 29.04.2026, 16:56
    • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - Rugxulo, 30.04.2026, 02:45
  • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - Rugxulo, 01.05.2026, 13:11
  • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - Rugxulo, 01.05.2026, 13:23
  • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - bocke, 02.05.2026, 00:40
    • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - rr, 02.05.2026, 16:00
      • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - bocke, 02.05.2026, 20:52
    • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - bocke, 07.05.2026, 13:33
      • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - RayeR, 07.05.2026, 15:38
        • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - bocke, 08.05.2026, 15:22
      • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - Rugxulo, 10.05.2026, 05:38
  • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - Khusraw, 03.05.2026, 12:56
    • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - Rugxulo, 08.05.2026, 04:39
      • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - bocke, 08.05.2026, 14:49
        • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - Rugxulo, 09.05.2026, 09:58
      • testing speed of DOS assemblers under djl's 8086 DOS emulator - Khusraw, 12.05.2026, 12:29