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Submission + - Bringing Swift to the Apple II (yeokhengmeng.com)

Submitted by yeokm1
yeokm1 writes: Swift is the modern programming language behind many apps that run on modern Apple platforms. I thought it would be fun to bring a small taste of it back to Apple’s early days, the Apple II.

I built a Swift language interpreter, bytecode compiler, VM to run that bytecode and file editor all to run on an almost half-century old platform.

There is something deeply poetic about taking a language created by modern Apple and bringing it full circle back to the 8-bit hardware where the company began. The Swift team really did well by designing a language elegant enough to make this experiment even remotely feasible on such old hardware.

This project was extremely challenging to pull off. But thanks to AI assistance, I got it done in just 2 months on the side.

Without AI, this project would not have been feasible for me as a hobby project. By hand at a similar standard, I think this would have taken well over 2-3 years work on the side or more.

  I dedicate this project to Steve Wozniak and the Swift team at Apple.

Submission + - Llama 2 LLM on DOS (yeokhengmeng.com) 1

Submitted by yeokm1
yeokm1 writes: Conventional wisdom states that running LLMs locally will require computers with high performance specifications especially GPUs with lots of VRAM. But is this actually true?

Thanks to an open-source llama2.c project, I ported it to work so vintage machines running DOS can actually inference Llama 2 LLM models. Of course there are severe limitations but the results will surprise you.

Submission + - Modern 2024 PC with a vintage DOS twist (yeokhengmeng.com)

Submitted by yeokm1
yeokm1 writes: If I were to tell you a PC has a floppy drive, optical drive, Sound Blaster card, serial, parallel and PS/2 ports running DOS, you would think I’m referring to a machine from the 1990s. But my very modern PC built in 2024 possess these characteristics!

Here I share my journey on how I managed to get DOS installed and working reasonably well on such a modern system with Ryzen 5 7600 and Geforce 4060 Ti.

The fact that a 30-year-old MS-DOS 6.22 can still work well enough on such a modern hardware is testament to the efforts made by the industry to ensure good x86 PC backward compatibility. AMD, Nvidia and Asus deserve to be commended on their efforts here.

Comment Re:Descent! (Score 1) 73

I'm not sure how to disable vsync in DOS in this machine. I highly doubt there are any utilities to do so. As for Descent 1, was there even an FPS counter for it?

As for CPU speed you raise a good point, I did not artificially modify or slow down the CPU or anything. Everything was stock yet the games I have tried like Descent seems to run at the right speed although I would recall it being quite speed sensitive. I wonder if the Lenovo has capped the CPU's real and protected mode performance in some way by default.

It would require more investigation time and effort. I actually intended for this experiment to be done for fun and was not meant to be a comprehensive test and review.

Submission + - DOS's Last Stand on a modern Thinkpad: X13 Gen 1 with Intel 10th-gen Core CPU (yeokhengmeng.com)

Submitted by yeokm1
yeokm1 writes: When one thinks of modern technologies like Thunderbolt, 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet and modern CPUs, one would associate them with modern operating systems. How about DOS?

It might seem impossible, however I did an experiment on a relatively modern 2020 Thinkpad and found that it can still run MS-DOS 6.22. MS-DOS 6.22 is the last standalone version of DOS released by Microsoft in June 1994. This makes it 30 years old today.

I shall share the steps and challenges in locating a modern laptop capable of doing so and making the 30-year-old OS work on it with audio and networking functions. This is likely among the final generation of laptops able to run DOS natively.

Submission + - Building a DOS ChatGPT client in 2023 (yeokhengmeng.com)

Submitted by yeokm1
yeokm1 writes: With the recent attention on ChatGPT and OpenAI’s release of their APIs, many developers have developed clients for modern platforms to talk to this super smart AI chatbot. However I’m pretty sure almost nobody has written one for a vintage platform like MS-DOS.

Submission + - Why I use the IBM Model M keyboard that is older than me? (yeokhengmeng.com) 1

Submitted by yeokm1
yeokm1 writes: The last primary keyboard I’ll use in my life might be the IBM Model M. It’ll probably last me the decades to the day that keyboards should become obsolete.

It is sad that with all the advancements in computing, the one piece of equipment that we use the most to interact with our computers has regressed technologically in the name of costs.

We don’t usually expect to be using 30-year-old hardware on a daily productive basis but the IBM Model M keyboard is that exception.

It is this big and heavy 2+kg keyboard in 1985 that pioneered the keyboard layout that we all use today. A small price to pay to own and use a product of such historical significance.

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