wai VS v86

It is a lot, but not quite 1000, yet. From https://webassembly.github.io/spec/core/appendix/index-instr... I see 436 instructions including SIMD which is over half the population. If I filtered it correctly, it looks like there are about 203 instructions in Wasm without SIMD. Many of those are not necessary for most programs.

There at least three small Wasm interpreters in Rust

4kloc https://github.com/yblein/rust-wasm

3kloc https://github.com/k-nasa/wai

500loc https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-bindgen/tree/HEAD/crates/wa...

This list has 169 Wasm instructions https://github.com/rolfrm/wasm-lisp/blob/master/instruction....

Wirth's RISC is neat, I'd love to re-do it in RISC-V (only 47 instructions in the base ISA). UM, Chifir and UXN look like Art (not pejorative), I'll definitely read the Chifir paper. They would be great systems to run on top of Wasm.

https://git.sr.ht/~bctnry/chifir

One might be able squeeze a Chifir VM into an ESP-32 (with external PSRAM).

> As a thought experiment, we're almost there! We could technically have `win95.img + bochs86vm.wasm + autorun.inf + msword.exe` wrapped in a "browser evaluator"

I looked into this and... holy crap! We are there. Not for modern programs quite yet, sure, but this is amazing. You can use Windows 2000 from your browser.

https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows2000

I think you are looking for Shadow.

https://shadow.goose.icu

Or just the whole kitchen sink. Why not?

http://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98

Also: https://github.com/copy/v86 - more productized browser x86 runtime, used by eg https://github.com/snaplet/postgres-wasm

Wonder if you could put all those databases in a Linux image and boot it using v86 [0], eliminating the need for a server.

[0] https://github.com/copy/v86

Trying it out in https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=kolibrios , it's also clearly a love letter to Windows 95 in particular. That could be an unstated goal here, create a very particular PC experience under very particular constraints. I don't know anything about the creator but it's very possible that this kind of work was actually their career in the 90s.

It's incredible how much work was done. Maybe this should be an internet curiosity like how TempleOS has become, though Terry's personality was a unique factor.

hmm, why would people still use VMWare? Isn't vbox open source, or even things such as https://copy.sh/v86/ would do most virtualization trick now days?

Oh, there are more OSes one can use at the parent page:

https://copy.sh/v86/

My highlights:

- First version of Windows (1.01)

- SerenityOS <3

- and even ReactOS