Dev ports 86Box to WebAssembly with Claude Code: a buildable, breakable retro PC in the browser
No_Twist_678 · reddit · 2026-10-19
A developer used Claude Code to build Retro86, a browser-based 1980s–90s MS-DOS PC that boots real BIOS into MS-DOS 4.00 built from Microsoft's released source. Free, no account, 75MB first load.
- What's inside: assemble PCs from 36 real motherboards (IBM PC/AT, Compaq, Tandy…) plus period-priced parts, 12 timed troubleshooting challenges with a leaderboard, preinstalled shareware (DOOM, Heretic, Tyrian), CRT shader, drive sounds, working monitor knobs.
- Claude Code's role: author directed and tested; Claude handled the Emscripten port (wasm64, pthreads, SDL2/WebGL, AudioWorklet drift-corrected audio), building MS-DOS 4.00 and generating FAT16 disk images, scripted browser tests that pre-save working CMOS for all 36 boards, sub-agent research into period prices from scanned magazine ads, and Electron packaging.
- Limitation: no 64-bit WASM on iPad Safari yet; desktop/Android only.
More from coding & agent
- 300 parallel agents plus a 100ms cheap verifier compress weeks of analyst work into one run — CurieuxExplorer · 2026-10-19
- Building a vast Unreal Engine world from scratch with Opus, says AI game dev is accelerating — sven_ai · 2026-10-19
- DeepSeek V4.1-Flash lands #2 on Terminal-Bench 4.0 at 1/16th the price of Opus 5 — zainhas · 2026-10-19
- Hermes Agent + local models manage all machines; hermes-skins repo hits 607 stars — Teknium · 2026-10-19
- Harness is dead? AI Engineer NYC debates stripping scaffolds vs. multi-day agents — TheTuringPost · 2026-10-19
- Open-source Claude Code plugin routes grunt work to cheap models, saves Opus for judgment — investigatormaker · 2026-10-19