ELKS is the Embedded Linux Kernel Subset, it works on 16-bit systems, right? That is correct.
Interestingly, upon this revisit, I’ve found word of a new project,
gcc-ia16. This is the successor of bcc, a version of GCC that
allows you to target 16-bit Intel x86 processors. Interestingly,
FreeDOS is also using it.
20190606/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embeddable_Linux_Kernel_Subset
20190606/DuckDuckGo gcc-ia16
https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/news/2018/08/gcc-ia16-for-dos/