Hi, the short answer is: YES.
You can run FreeDOS on 8086.
> is it possible that freeDOS work on an embedded system without BIOS?
The answer for that is longer. Searching for "embed" on
http://fd-doc.sourceforge.net/faq/cgi-bin/search.cgi
will point you to:
http://fd-doc.sourceforge.net/faq/cgi-bin/viewfaq.cgi?faq=./incoming/277
which explains which BIOS services you have to provide for a minimal
FreeDOS install (in other words, services which are needed by the kernel
itself - depending on which DOS programs you want to run, you may need
additional BIOS parts loaded).
Note that running FreeDOS on a pre-286 will use a lot of RAM.
Normally, FreeDOS will move most of the kernel to HMA (right
after the first 1 MB) and the FreeCOM shell will use XMS for
swapping, so it only uses a small amount of DOS memory. As your
80186 has no HMA and no XMS, both the kernel and the FreeCOM
command.com shell will have to use DOS memory for everthing,
so I think only 400-500 kilobytes of DOS RAM will be free. On
a 286 system, it is easy to have more than 600 kilobytes free
with FreeDOS. On a 386 with EMM386 or another UMB driver loaded,
you can even use dosdata=umb / loadhigh / devicehigh to get more
than 620 kilobytes of the 640 kilobytes of DOS RAM free.
Of course you will also be unable to do some 386-specific things,
including: emm386, caching, dosfsck, booting from LBA FAT32 drives,
himem (but you can use fdxms instead of himem if you have at least
a 286 or newer processor). If EDIT or KEYB fail on your 80186, try
EDIT 0.7d and MKEYB, which should work even on 8086. Or use no
keyboard driver at all (if you use US keyboard layout). Let us know
if you find other programs which do not work on 80186 processors.
To get started, download the kernel and shell or a minimal boot disk
from http://fdos.org/kernel/ - you should probably not use the big
ISO distros (beta9sr2: 12 MB, Blair's full ISO: 120 MB). But you can
use the ODIN one diskette distro with many preinstalled programs.
Eric
PS: Feel free to add corrections / ideas to the FAQ entry about 80186.
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