Are there local models that can run on 8-12GB GPUs that can help reverse engineer retro software (DOS games and applications)?
If you have a lot of system RAM you could technically run Qwen Flash Next. On a 4080 with 16GB of RAM and 128GB of DDR5 I get ~35-40 t/s. And it is very capable.
For autonomous work, even Qwen3.8-Flash-Next stumbles, although it does work to an extent. Qwen3.8-27b is useless. They're also slow, even on consumer systems with 24/32 GB VRAM.
For generic help, I haven't tried, but I definitely wouldn't want a model that misleads me or takes a very long time to answer while I'm focused.
Frontier models do this type of work without problems, both much faster and much more precisely, which makes local LLMs a waste of time and/or money.
Also, there exists a $750 GPU (V100) that can run 4-bit 27B quant at >90 t/s. And I find it far from useless. It is not the most capable model, but when you just need to offload and rip through assembly and you have chores batched up, it's pretty good. I use Qwen Flash Next at a 3-bit quantization, point it at disassembly with goals, put it in a harness with auto-compaction and a loop, and let it rip. Sometimes I wake up, and it’s just hilariously off. Other times, it completely accomplished the goal. I have one Qwen Flash Next 3.8 running right now, and 2x27B on a 4bit quant as workers, and they stay busy. This was not possible with local models on this level of hardware even two months ago.
I have Qwen Flash Next at >100 t/s. Things have never been better for local models.
I've left Qwen38-27b to reverse a tiny DOS program (few hundred bytes), and after more than an hour it was still struggling with debugger traces, misinterpreting basic DOS calls, and had produced no finished analysis. Possibly after a few hours it may have succeeded (surely with mistakes to find and correct), but then it'd look like a monkey at a typewriter more than else.
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is another level for sure, and it's a significant milestone for local LLMs IMO, since it can run on midrange GPUs, as long as there is a relatively large amount of system RAM (still not cheap). It's quite fast, although it also need to be taken into account that it's just moderately intelligent - if you observe the CoT while reversing, you'll find that struggles, performing many unproductive actions as well.