Hamster OS (VirtualBox

history · operating-system · Windows 3.x · James Alexander Wasil

Hamster OS is a virtual machine using VirtualBox OVA format 0.9. It boots to Hamster.IMG, a 1.44mb floppy drive. It uses very base elements of FreeDOS and DOS C, portraying it as a minimalistic Windows 3.11 style environment and GUI with all the trimmings you would expect like the basic Calculator, Notepad, etc. It includes the use of a HTTP stack, but it seems to be proprietary, and it looks like MTCP was either removed from that or never there. It uses VMM86 to emulate DOS boxes with the same or similar environment as Win 3.11 would use, and has a RAM disk set up from the desktop. It essentially was what I was going for in 1996 when I was 16 years old doing the exact same thing with FreeDOS Beta 1, and opting for utilizing it as a BIOS replacement rather than a virtual loader in 2026 (30 years after the fact). Sadly, they would charge for it and monetize this, too to have web access and chat. :( Still, it is a great project that shows what could have been a competitor for the QNX Floppy Demo 1.44 if FreeDOS had gotten it together, and is still pretty useful for niche projects. And it is really, really small, too: 76k for an OVA! About as tiny as you can get for a DOS clone. Preserved and brought to you by JamesWasil's Toolbox -James