tiny386, an emulator that turns an ESP32 board into a 386-class PC, is getting ports for the RP2350 microcontroller. Two independent projects handle the move: FRANK, a dedicated emulation board listed at github.com/rh1tech/frank-386, and a variant for Waveshare's Pi Zero boards at github.com/AidenShaw2020/frank-386-waveshare-pi-zero.

Both ports keep tiny386's approach of emulating a 32-bit x86 chip with a handful of 486 and 586 instructions layered on top, enough to boot a Linux kernel. The RP2350 versions add VGA and DVI/HDMI output and other PC peripherals, all on hardware that costs about as much as a basic development board.

On the ESP32, tiny386 already runs, if slowly. The RP2350 port is expected to be noticeably faster. Nobody is promising a full modern Linux distribution here. The realistic targets are DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, or a stripped-down Linux, all pulling from a still-enormous library of 1990s software. The original tiny386 project lives at github.com/hchunhui/tiny386, and FRANK's hardware details are at frank.rh1.tech.