Use Claude Code to revive an old assembly build

A developer used Claude Code to get a 1991 assembly game’s old tools compiling again on modern setup files.

Done with Claude Code· Advanced· Apr 2026

What they did
They pointed Claude Code CLI at the full source for an unpublished 1991 386+ assembly game and prepared UASM, a MASM-like assembler, along with DOSBox for testing. With Sonnet, they worked through the legacy build utilities and asked it to inspect comments in the code for bugs the author had already noted.
How it went
The picture converter tools and sprite extractor now build and run inside DOSBox. The main game still does not compile, but the author expects to keep going for a few more hours; Sonnet 4.6 quickly identified a naming conflict where incbin was being treated as a reserved word.
Tips
When you bring old assembly code forward, watch for macros or labels that have since become reserved names. It also helps to test each utility separately before trying to rebuild the whole game.

Try it yourself with Claude Code

I have an old [language] project in [folder] that was last built in [year]. Figure out what assembler, linker, and helper tools it needs, set up a build path on my [OS], and fix compile errors one at a time. Explain each change briefly, and stop to ask before you delete, overwrite, or submit anything.

Fill in the [brackets]. Agents can make mistakes, so review anything before it is sent, paid or deleted.

Read the original on news.ycombinator.com ↗

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