What does HackerNews think of 8088_bios?

Probably possible somehow. Apparently it runs an open source BIOS[1] that they kind of stole. Despite this, the author of said BIOS added support for Book8088, so it should be possible to flash one of those images onto it[2].

I'd actually guess the mods in this article are more likely to fix broken games, though, especially if they're shipping with 8088 and CGA clones rather than the real thing. That said, I don't actually have any experience with the 5150 or its clones directly outside of emulation, so I can only really postulate. (Retro-computing has gotten quite expensive, so I have prioritized a lot of other machines for now, otherwise I'd really like to.)

[1]: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/chinese-8088-based...

[2]: https://github.com/skiselev/8088_bios

There are at least three "real" 8086 BIOSes-- "real" as in they can work on actual hardware rather than just emulators-- available in source form, which might be worth examining.

https://www.phatcode.net/downloads.php?id=101 -- this is a respin of code that apparently originated in the 1980s in sketchy Taiwanese clones, so I think some of the docs are reverse engineered

http://glabios.org/ is an all-new-still-under-development project, but it works well enough for my hobby usage.

https://github.com/skiselev/8088_bios These are more targeted towards some specific hardware projects (Xi8088/Micro8088)

Obviously, being for a simple 8086 mrans they don't have some of the complex chipset config used in a modern PC, and even stuff like "hard disc support" is outsourced (for that, you might consider stuff like the XT-IDE Universal BIOS)