Micro DOS arcade cabinet streams DOS games over Wi-Fi
Juha Lilja's dollhouse-scale cabinet uses an M5Stack AtomS3R as a remote terminal, with tilting as the joystick and screen presses as buttons.
Juha Lilja has presented the Micro DOS, a miniature arcade cabinet that streams DOS games over Wi-Fi from a nearby PC, as part of the 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge. The project was reported by Hackaday.
The cabinet is built around an M5Stack AtomS3R, which serves as an embedded remote terminal rather than running the games itself. The games run on a PC, which streams the screen to the small display and receives input events back from the cabinet.
Input is handled without a conventional joystick or buttons. Players steer by tilting the whole cabinet, which acts as a virtual joystick for up, down, left and right, while button input comes from pressing the physical screen, supporting single, double and long clicks.
According to the project description, the AtomS3R firmware is game-agnostic: it only displays the content it receives and sends input events back to the PC. The code and a fuller explanation are available in a GitHub repository.
The build is small enough to sit in the builder's daughter's dollhouse.
Quick answers
What is the Micro DOS?
It is a miniature arcade cabinet built by Juha Lilja that streams DOS games over Wi-Fi from a nearby PC, presented as part of the 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge.
What hardware does the Micro DOS use?
An M5Stack AtomS3R acts as the cabinet's embedded remote terminal, while the games themselves run on a PC.
How do you control the Micro DOS?
Tilting the whole cabinet works as a virtual joystick for the four directions, and pressing the physical screen provides button input through single, double and long clicks.