A ChatGPT meets MS-DOS

IBM 5155. Peter Böhm - CC BY 3.0.

Yeo Kheng Meng is a retrocomputing hobbyist based in Singapore with a Slack client for Windows 3.1 to his credit. He just released a ChatGPT client for MS-DOS that can run on a 4.77 MHz IBM PC, providing a unique way to converse with OpenAI’s popular language model. Running ChatGPT on early-1980s computers has proved quite the challenge, as much for the lack of native networking capability as for these machines’ limited power (Yeo used a 1984 IBM laptop, with an Intel 8088 4.77 MHz processor and 640KB of memory). The developer worked with Open Watcom C/C++, a modern compiler running on Windows 11 that can target 16-bit DOS platforms. To add a network layer, he went with the PC/TCP Packet Driver, a network API invented in 1983, and a library of TCP/IP utilities for DOS developed by Michael B. Brutman. Last but not least, ChatGPT APIs require encrypted HTTPS connections, yet there is no library that can handle them on MS-DOS. Yeo therefore had to create an HTTP-to-HTTPS proxy that can work on a modern computer and translate requests and responses between the MS-DOS client and ChatGPT’s secure API. On the subject of this tinkering, Yeo writes in his blog: “Purists may not like this solution but this is the best I can do with my abilities in a reasonable amount of time.”

⇨ YouTube, “DOS ChatGPT client on a 1984 IBM Portable PC 5155”

⇨ Ars Technica, Benj Edwards, “Hobbyist builds ChatGPT client for MS-DOS.”

2023-03-23