Day: March 27, 2023

A ChatGPT client running on an IBM Portable PC

MS-DOS Client Brings ChatGPT To The IBM PC

March 27, 2023 by 16 Comments

AI-powered chatbots are clearly the future of computing, and it’s only a matter of time before you’ll see them appear on every internet-connected gadget. If you thought you were safe from this by sticking to an ancient MS-DOS PC though, think again: [Yeo Kheng Meng] has recently written a ChatGPT client that runs on DOS.

[Yeo Kheng Meng] didn’t cheat by simply running MS-DOS on a modern PC, either: he tested the client on a real 1984 vintage IBM 5155 Portable PC. This semi-portable PC/XT model sports a 4.77 MHz 8088 CPU, 640 kB of RAM and a CGA video card with a built-in monochrome monitor. An NE2000 ISA network card, running in 8-bit mode, enables the Portable to connect to the internet.

Running the client couldn’t be simpler: just run doschgpt.exe and type in your question. [Yeo Kheng Meng] developed this program using the Open Watcom C/C++ compiler, which was the compiler of choice for most DOS game developers back in the day. Networking support was provided by an era-appropriate packet driver together with MTCP, a TCP/IP stack developed by [Michael Brutman] for DOS-based internet applications.

Connecting to the ChatGPT API and parsing the results was pretty straightforward, but implementing the required TLS encryption was not. Even if there was a library available for MS-DOS, the 5155 wouldn’t have enough CPU power to run it in real time, so [Yeo Kheng Meng] decided to run that bit of the networking stack on a modern PC and send an unencrypted HTTP stream to the DOS client.

The end result is a delightful retro-futuristic setup that seems to have come straight out of a 1980s science fiction movie. We can already picture it together with a Commodore 64 reporting the news and an IRC server running on an IBM PC. Continue reading “MS-DOS Client Brings ChatGPT To The IBM PC” →

Bus Stop Bloom Filter

March 27, 2023 by 19 Comments

Imagine you’re sitting on a nice bench, the sun shines warmly, and a bus pulls up. You’re headed to Stendal from Osnabrück, how can you tell if you should get on that bus? [Julian Vanecek] is trying to turn that from an O(n) problem to an O(1) one with a Bloom filter right at the bus stop.

In [Julian’s] sample code, each stop is a 3-bit number that can be encoded into a 192-bit array. Your ticket is just that 3-bit number encoded, so you can look at the graphic on the side of the incoming bus, match it against your ticket, and hop on. Gone are the days of waiting for the little LED screen to cycle through all the stops, waiting for yours to come up. Your ticket should have just a few boxes filled in so it is relatively quick to search against the bus’s graphic.

Of course, there is a potential for a false positive rate. [Julian] points out that this can be tuned to prevent errors and has achieved a < 0.5% false positive rate using the Deutsche Bahn bus system. The code is written in Python and available on GitHub. Perhaps buses could have a large flip-dop display on the side, to adjust to show which stops they’re headed to next. Additionally, it doesn’t encode which stops are next, just which stops the bus will eventually go to.

In the video after the break, [Julian] explains how the system works. Whether it would be ultimately adopted is somewhat beside the point. We love the seeing people re-imagining ideas and trying to apply new techniques to improve the things around them.

Continue reading “Bus Stop Bloom Filter” →