A hobbyist software program developer and retro computing fanatic has succeeded in bridging the ChatGPT and IBM PC-XT computing divide. Looking out for a problem, Yo Kheng Meng puzzled if he may write a ChatGPT consumer for MS-DOS. Particularly, he focused a 1984 classic IBM 5155 Moveable PC, which is powered by a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 CPU and has 640KB of RAM (sufficient for anybody, proper?). A number of technological obstacles wanted to be surmounted to make the mission a hit.
Sometimes, most individuals entry ChatGPT by way of an internet browser, nevertheless it appears to be a rising pattern to entry this AI useful resource by way of a consumer. We have now reported on some notable and enjoyable purchasers like a ChatGPT Smartwatch powered by a Raspberry Pi and Microsoft’s a lot maligned Clippy with an AI mind transplant. Nonetheless, getting ChatGPT to work on one of the crucial historic of PCs is likely to be much more bold.
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Meng began his quest by discovering a compiler which may span the 40 years or so hole between the goal laptop and ChatGPT. The Open Watcom C/C++ compiler match the invoice. To check the DOS software throughout growth he determined to run it in a digital machine (Virtualbox digital machine operating DOS 6.22) on a contemporary PC.
One of many largest hurdles with DOS was with the networking required to hook up with the ChatGPT service. Meng discovered that MTCP, written by Michael B. Brutman, would facilitate the connection to ChatGPT’s Chat Completion API. Nonetheless, to speak with this API required the developer to “assemble the whole POST request by hand in C.”
A couple of additional hurdles the developer needed to move included JSON parsing, altering the ChatGPT output from HTTPS to HTTP, and dealing with the shortage of multi-threading in DOS. You may learn extra about how this was achieved in his full weblog put up.
OpenAI’s conversational AI ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-Skilled Transformer) has gained numerous consideration in and outdoors of the tech world since its debut late final yr. It has spurred intense new competitors between net titans like Google and Microsoft, it has helped make clear the potential of AI (and some downsides), and it has induced a mini-boom for a lot of associated companies.