few.lt

Why?

Good question. We asked Claude Sonnet the same thing, from a DOS terminal, and it said:

"It exists because 'who needs this' is often the wrong question. Someone clearly wanted it, built it, and made it free."

That is reason enough.

More practically: retrocomputing enthusiasts running real hardware, embedded and industrial environments where DOS is still quietly doing its job, and anyone who enjoys the constraint of working within a 1993 operating system as a creative exercise. Also it is genuinely impressive at parties.

How it Works?

DOS cannot speak HTTPS. Rather than solving thirty years of cryptography on a 486, we run a plain HTTP proxy at dos.few.lt that relays requests to the main few.lt server over HTTPS. Your DOS machine talks plaintext to the proxy; the proxy handles the TLS.

The client is FEW.EXE — a native DOS executable built with DJGPP and the Watt-32 TCP/IP library. It speaks directly to your network card via a packet driver. No DOS networking stack required. No WINSOCK.DLL. No CONFIG.SYS nightmares.

Output is converted from UTF-8 to DOS codepages automatically. The proxy is also politely instructing AI not to use emoji, because nobody needs to see 🎉 rendered as 🥌 on a VGA terminal.

Requirements

• 386 or better CPU
• DOS 3.3 or later — MS-DOS, FreeDOS, DR-DOS all work
• A packet driver loaded for your network card
• TCP/IP network access
• A reasonable sense of humour

Download

FEW DOS Cli v1.0 — FEW.ZIP
FEW DOS Cli v1.0 — Floppy Image — almost certainly the first time that EUPL v1.2 licence copy has been distributed on a FAT12 floppy.

And, source code, prebuilt binary, floppy image, PHP proxy script, and a copy of the EUPL v1.2 — can be found on Codeberg repository.

Installation

1. Load your packet driver - before running FEW.EXE, load a packet driver for your network card. Add it to AUTOEXEC.BAT to load automatically on boot or just run from a command line: C:\DRIVERS\NE2000.COM 0x60 3 0x300
2. Configure FEW.INI - Edit FEW.INI in the same directory as FEW.EXE. Set login and password to use your few.lt account and access Claude Sonnet. Leave blank for free tier — results may vary, we warned you. Set translit=1 if your language uses non-Latin script and your terminal cannot display it.
3. Run it - C:\FEW> FEW HELP. That's it. If your packet driver is loaded and your network is up, it works.

Adjust IRQ and port for your hardware. DOSBox-X users can use the included NE2000.COM driver — see DOSBXCFG.TXT for configuration.

Usage

Syntax is identical to the shell wrapper and web terminal:

FEW  [--flag] [text]

Examples:

FEW HELP
FEW HELP AI
FEW HASH --SHA256 HELLO

Pipe input (stdin redirection):

type essay.txt   | FEW AI --SUMMARIZE
type config.sys  | FEW AI --ASK "why my soundblaster isn't working?"
type readme.txt  | FEW AI --ASK "how do I configure the packet driver?"
FEW AI --SUMMARIZE < FILE_ID.DIZ

DOS tech support has never been this good.

Building from source

The full source is included in the archive and on Codeberg. README.TXT file has some instructions on building it — your best shot is to cross-compile it on Linux using toolchain setup script:

bash setup-toolchain.sh

The script has been tested on Gentoo. It should pull up required binaries, generate required files, and compile the tool in the end.

Self-hosting the proxy

The PHPPROXY/ directory contains the PHP proxy script. If you run your own few.lt instance, deploy the proxy on any PHP-capable server (don't forget — SSL off!) and point FEW.INI at it:

host=dos.yourserver.com
port=80

The proxy handles UTF-8 to DOS codepages conversion, line wrapping to 80 columns, and HTTPS relay.

Licence

FEW DOS Cli is licensed under the European Union Public Licence v1.2 (EUPL v1.2).

Source code available at codeberg.org/flavius/few-dos.

"It scratches a specific itch for a specific community, it is open source, and it harms nobody."

— Claude Sonnet, from a DOS terminal, April 2026