Developer Builds a ChatGPT Client for MS-DOS - Slashdot

Posted by EditorDavid

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  not to piss on anyone's hobby project, but isn't there already a MS DOS web browser such as Arachne that can do it?

  • Re:

    OK, I didn't read the link before commenting (I'm a pipelined CPU so I do branch prediction). Of course with prediction comes misprediction. Anyway that looks like a text mode interface to the chatGPT API not a graphical UI. Still.. the gist of my comment stands but on shakier grounds. It doesn't seem like a challenge but I guess there is some retro-novelty to the idea?

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      Young coder having fun coding for old hardware. Nothing spectacular but a good story. Also who owns an IBM 5155 Portable PC?(extra points for being far younger than the PC)

      • Re:

        Hm, ok that's a fair assessment.

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        I have a 5150 and 5160. Would love to get my hands on a 5155.

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      I guess the web version of chatGPT requires javascript, which Arachne does not support.

• "ChatGPT emulate a dos prompt please"

  Now run a chatGPT API in this dos environment.

  Next up, playing doom

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• This is a ChatGPT cloud *CLIENT* running in DOS. It doesn't do anything at all. The only technological "challenge" was to get enough TCP/IP going in DOS to pass on requests to the cloud API and get the text responses back.

  Is this what passes for technological achievement these days? Wake me up when they get it working locally without any networking.

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  • Translation ...

    "I am salty because I did not think of doing something like this until I read that someone else made the attempt."

    • Re:

      Hmm no. This is more or less equivalent to implementing a terminal emulator in DOS. I haven't thought of doing something like this because it's not terribly interesting.

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      I still remember working on a Token Ring network back then, using IPX/SPX. [wikipedia.org] And before that, of course, there was MP,M [wikipedia.org], so that multiple CP/M machines could connect to a central file server. Kids today think it all started with TCP/IP!

• That is the problem with the way these models work, the model can cobble together a sentence but it cannot really understand the meaning of the output. The model only knows that it picked the most appropriate words according to its training, coherent or useful or not.

  • Re: What is the AI smoking

    In one of his books, Stephen Pinker describes the case of severely intellectually disabled woman who could barely feed herself or tie her shoes, but would produce grammatically correct and mellifluous sentences...with absolute nonsense for content.

    He used it to argue that intelligent speech and intelligence are two distinct things, and any form of the Sapir-Worf hypothesis is demonstrably wrong.

    One infers the general idea holds for chatbots and not just humans.

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    I drank a glass of the strong vodka along with my feeble meat. My curious green ideas slept furiously. Also, where are the wonderfully coined old project names like Protosynthex?

    • Re:

      > My curious green ideas slept furiously.

      I think I smoked some of that once too, its all kind of fuzzy now.

• Congratulations, they've invented ELIZA [wikipedia.org], and Dr. Sbaitso [wikipedia.org].
• Did they forget about tcp/ip for a while? The DOS implementations are no secret. They've been around for the past 20 years.

• HXDOS is a thing, capable of running simple Win32 programs under DOS. For example, 7-zip (console version) works fine under DOS.

  I haven't tested if Windows Python can run under HXDOS, or if Python can be built with DJGPP for DOS.

  I'm also not sure if HXDOS supports networking at all.

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    It can, but I believe the latest version offered for download is 2.4.2, and I don't know if there's any way to get networking with it without writing some code in something else

• I never used ChatGPT, but I think that is awesome great work. Would be nice if FreeDOS put that on their CD:)

• Development won't be complete until responses are read in Dr Sbaitso's [youtube.com] voice

• Might as well weld a USB or phone jack onto a Model T

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    Well the Model T is pretty immune to wifi and bluetooth hacks. So it may get you to your destination when a modern car cannot.

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      It would be interesting to see if WiFi and Bluetooth are immune to the full spectrum glory emitted by a Model T ignition coil with vibrator interrupter. I used one of these on a cloud chamber when I was a kid. In addition to giving a variety of nasty shocks, it destroyed most of the radio spectrum that I could receive (500KHz-300MHz).

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        Sounds like a win, built-in hacking countermeasures.:-)

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          It's all fun and games until FCC's black helicopters and unmarked vans show up.

• 1.) Make the ChatGPT client a TSR. Similar to Borland's Sidekick. That way, if you are doing a document in Wordstar, or a spreadsheet in Lotus 123, or a presentarion in IBM's storyboard, you can punch the key combo and get to the ChatGPT client to aid in your work

  2.) Implement copy paste from the Character Framebuffer (again, like Sidekick did) so you can copy stuff from your programs into chatGPT (and back).

  3.) Implement the TCP/IP stack as NDIS 2.0 or ODI, so that it is more "period Correct"

  4.) See if it is possible, by slightly increasing the HW requirements it is possible to dispense of the HTTP to HTTPS proxy running on a more modern machine. The minimum would be using a math copro + an 80186@ ~10Mhz or a NEC V20 in the OG PC (highly unlikely). Failing that a 286 (this would be the sweet spot), and failing that a 386SX

  Pretty please! With sugar?

  Again, congratulations for a Job Well done. Peace!

  PS: The "Links" FOSS web browser for MS-DOS has a partial implementation of TLS, it can be had here:
  http://links.twibright.com/ [twibright.com]

  Also, a FOSS mail program for FreeDOS, FLMail has partial TLS support:
  https://sourceforge.net/p/free... [sourceforge.net]

  They needs a DOS Extender though, so, the bare minimum would be a 286, as pharlap 286 extender or Rational Software's Dos16m (available in the WACOM Compiuler the author is using) would be available...

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    Thank's for bringing this memory: TSR. Terminate and Stay Resident! Did one in my youth - a dictionary that could have been activated from any aditor - it was fun when you could controlled all ends of the system!

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    • • Re:

        The packet driver, as well as all the other parts of the DOS TCP/IP stack, are indeed implemented as TSRs, simply because there is no other way. DOS is not a multitasking OS and doesn't support dynamical linking, so providing any driver, lower-level API etc. for a higher-level application in virtually all cases happens either by statically linking the application to the API library, or by loading the API library as a TSR before starting the application.

        However, I believe that the talk was about making the a

• • Re:

    There is in fact one available [atariage.com] for Atari 8-bits. It would be possible to use the same hardware to write one for C64/128 pretty easily.

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    These commodore things were mere toys. The authors should use an Altair 8800 box with a bunch of S-100 daughterboards, a Z-80 CPU and running CP/M 2.2 , like real men do.

• Just have the shell directly run commands through a ChatGPT filter, such that you execute any UNIX command and ChatGPT figures out what it needs to do in DOS to make it happen.

• • 1 hidden comment

• including footage of their client ultimately running on a vintage IBM PC from 1984 (with a black and orange monitor and those big, boxy keys).

  The monitors were black background with green characters. The black and orange monitors didn't come about until the period where "clone" PCs were coming out. My black and orange monitor used a Hercules graphics card, which also gave me better than 640x480(?) pixel resolution.

  • Re:

    Come to think of it, the phosphors were yellow, not really orange...

  • Re: Already they're misrepresenting the past.

    The orange phosphors were much more pleasant than the green ones, but (IIRC) green phosphors were much cheaper so this is why green screens were much more common.

      Orange gas plasma monochrome monitors were the best back in the 80s but very expensive.

  • Re:

    better than 640x480(?) pixel resolution

    Hercules was 720x348 in pixel-addressable graphics mode, so only better than VGA in one direction, almost fifty thousand fewer total pixels (about 250,000 versus just over 300,000), and pixels not even close to square. (It was 720x350 in text mode using the character generator ROM, but there wasn't enough VRAM for the last two rows in bitmap mode.)

• They should be using STDOUT with the ability to pipe the output to a file or another program, as well as to be able to accept input directed from files/programs so it can be used with scripting.

    This needs to be the standard for any platform that has a ChatGPT CLI client.