Binbows 98: an operating system, technically
Binbows is a bootable disc image for people who miss beige computers, grey dialog boxes and the specific sound a hard drive makes when it is thinking very hard about nothing. It boots straight off the firmware — no host operating system involved — shows you a splash screen, crashes on purpose, and leaves you at a command prompt that is real enough to read your actual disc.
★ Featured: Binbows 98 Second Edition
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The boot screen. The bar moves. |
Experience the Power of Binbows 98! The most stable and fastest Binbows yet, largely because there is not much of it. Three and a bit megabytes on a disc, and it reaches a command prompt faster than your firmware reached the boot menu. What's actually in there:
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Included at no extra charge
🖼️ The Boot SplashLOGO.SYS on the boot volume, exactly where 1998 kept it.
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⌨️ The Recovery Console
C:\>_
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What is real and what is not
Every operating system should be clear about which half of it is the joke. Here is the split, stated plainly, because the interesting part is how much of it isn't:
| Thing | Real | A bit |
|---|---|---|
| The boot | A signed-off PE/COFF EFI application your firmware genuinely executes | The part where it immediately crashes |
| The file listing | Names, sizes, timestamps and free space read live off the volume | Drive C: is a 1.44 MB FAT12 image pretending to be a hard disk |
| The hardware report | CPU brand from cpuid, firmware vendor from the system table |
"Emotional memory: overdrawn" |
| The boot splash | An 8-bit BMP with palette-cycling animation, same trick Windows 9x used | The bar is going nowhere and so are you |
| The memory report | Laid out exactly like DOS's MEM, down to the column widths |
One of the rows is not a category of memory |
Full product details Go straight to downloads
💻 System Requirements for Binbows 98
| Component | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Any x86-64 CPU (or two very well-organised hamsters) | Same, but one you don't mind rebooting |
| Firmware | UEFI, with Secure Boot off. This is the one hard requirement. | UEFI with a boot menu key you can actually remember |
| RAM | Whatever your firmware already gave itself | 256 MB in a VM, which is 250 MB more than it uses |
| Hard Disk | None. It never writes anything. There is nothing to install. | Still none (and a place to store regrets) |
| Display | Anything the firmware exposes through UEFI GOP | 1280x800 or better — the font magnifies in whole pixels |
| Media | A USB stick or a virtual CD-ROM (unless you can whistle data) | The cheapest USB stick in the drawer |
Runs fine in a virtual machine, which is where most people meet it these days — it just needs UEFI firmware rather than the legacy BIOS its costume suggests. See running Binbows in a VM.
What people are saying
★★★★★ "It booted."
— D., who had set expectations accordingly
★★★★☆ "Installed this on my work laptop. I no longer have a work laptop, but I stand by the decision."
— anonymous, for reasons that are now clear
★★★☆☆ "I typed sudo out of habit and it put me in my place. Personally. By name."
— a satisfied-ish user
★★★★★ "My dad walked past, saw the boot screen, and said 'oh, that one was good.' Ten out of ten."
— the highest praise this project will ever receive
More features coming soon! Bookmark this page! (Or tape it to your monitor.)
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Best OS (Allegedly) |
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Editor's Coin Flip |
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Top Download (From One PC) |
Seen in print
Our advertising campaign ran in exactly one publication, once, and the publication has asked us not to name it again.* You can read the whole thing:
*It is on the ad. We are aware. Legal is aware.