Modder launches ChatGPT on 40-year-old PC


Nathan Le Gohlisse

Hardware Specialist

March 28, 2023 at 5:20 p.m.

9

ChatGPT-vintage © © Yeokm1

© Yeokm1

Running ChatGPT on a 39-year-old PC is what a modder managed to do while fiddling with MS-DOS… and it works strangely well.

Yeo Kheng Meng is the name of the modder in question. IBM recently unveiled its own ChatGPT client for MS-DOS, enabling OpenAI-developed artificial intelligence to run on an almost 40-year-old IBM PC, reports TechSpot. And despite its vintage look, this somewhat peculiar client manages to do more or less as well as the one you have access to on your current machine.

A path strewn with pitfalls

In this case, the device used is a 1984 IBM 5155 “portable” PC. Unsurprisingly, it is powered by a CPU from another age, literally: the Intel 8088, clocked at 4.77 MHz and coupled at 640 KB of RAM. There is also an NE2000 Ethernet adapter, ISA compatible and the whole is powered by MS-DOS 6.22. Yeo Kheng Meng chose this configuration, believing (probably correctly) that any DOS machine should be able to handle a client capable of working with this configuration.

The main difficulty in running ChatGPT on this old IBM PC, however, was related to the Internet connection: how to run modern software, requiring network access, on a machine dating from before the emergence of the Internet?

Yeo Kheng Meng also had to find a way to test his client on Windows 11 64-bit while the OS is, by default, unable to run compiled 16-bit DOS binaries. The interested party was also confronted with winevdm compatibility which prevented any connection to the net. Finally, Python for MS-DOS was also not usable since it does not support 16-bit CPUs, note TechSpot.

The modder therefore turned to a Virtualbox system to test his project on the same DOS version as that installed on the IBM 5155, all with a bridged network to the host PC, we read. Yeo Kheng Meng further explains that the MTCP library – a scalable TCP stack, compatible with multi-core systems – was crucial in enabling him to carry out the operation. This tool indeed enabled him to code the functionality of networking rather quickly, and this in spite of some pitfalls related to the absence of multithreading on DOS.


A curious but functional hitch (up to one condition)

As pointed out TechSpot, the only part of the ChatGPT client for MS-DOS that cannot run natively on the IBM 5155 is the HTTP to HTTPS proxy. Porting the necessary TLS library to the Intel 8088 would indeed have led to far too low performance and fatal slowness. This part of the process must therefore rely on a modern PC, it reads. In other words, Yeo Kheng Meng’s project cannot run entirely on an IBM 5155: it needs outside help.

That said, the utility developed still makes it possible to use ChatGPT on this almost four-decade-old machine. A beautiful feat with anachronistic or retro-futuristic airs, it depends. ” Typing text and receiving an intelligent response back is what people have imagined for computers since the heyday of the 5155 “, summary TechSpot. A reflection that takes on a particular meaning just a few days after the death of Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel.

Note that this is not the first time that an initiative aims to bring modern platforms and software to collector’s machines. In 2015, Netflix engineers, for example, developed a platform client designed for the NES. Two years ago, a developer was also able to cast a video on an Apple II computer. As for Yeo Kheng Meng, he had succeeded, this time in 2019, in creating a version of Slack running on Windows 3.1. It remains to be seen what his next project will be.

Source : TechSpot



Source link -99