yeokm1

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.

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!

I recently built myself a PC as my previous desktop components was insufficient for my current needs. I decided to build one with the ability to still reach back into the past to run DOS.

In this post, I will go through my thought process I went through to decide on the specifications as well as the journey I made to run MS-DOS 6.22 on it.

I did an experiment on a relatively modern 2020 Thinkpad and found that it can still run DOS.

Modern features like Thunderbolt, 2.5 Gig Ethernet and Sound Blaster compatibility over Intel High Definition Audio can work which is pretty remarkable. Thanks to drivers that can actually be found online.

I also ran 8088 Domination and it seems to work well too.

This is however the end of the line, no more Thinkpads and likely other laptops made after this model generation will be able to run DOS natively.

I used Enhanced Doskey. http://paulhoule.com/doskey/

They have already written an article about it :)

https://hackaday.com/2023/09/10/upgraded-graphics-gremlin-ad...

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.

I updated my blog post to include a memory and disk usage comparison :)

The printf is just for example code.

In actual fact, I'll have to copy the data to a char array to be sent to display in the listbox.

VC++ 1.52 has an internal text editor but nowhere near the capabilities of Visual Studio Code or any modern text editors.

I also use Git and sourcetree and they won't run on Win 2K.

If someone has got a working TLS 1.2 on such an old OS, I'll like to know too. Because I certainly haven't saw any example.

I think the work to get TLS 1.2 working will certainly dwarf the work on this Slack app.

I felt it was enough for me. :)

https://api.slack.com/

Win 3.1 apps can also access memory in 64K segments which I only use 1 to hold the humongous HTTP+JSON reply from Slack.

Wikipedia says "However, no single process can use more than 16 MB.". Not sure where is the source of that though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1x

You are correct. My 390E has 384MB of RAM but only 256MB is accessible by Win 3.1.

An earlier blog post shows this http://yeokhengmeng.com/2016/09/windows-for-workgroups-3-11-...

Hey thanks for the tips. Let me adjust the blog post to mention this point

Hmm. Borland and Watcom compilers came up in my research. Will look into them for help next time!

Thanks for raising this to me!

Oh I did not know about this! I just based my understanding from the official Microsoft documentation. Thanks!

Trumpet Winsock is not by Microsoft :P

Noted. Will update my blog post!

Something I can try next time! I didn't know about BearSSL before

Unsure why it goes to twitter. Here is the blog post. http://yeokhengmeng.com/2019/12/building-a-new-win-3-1-app-i...

Agreed. But such CDs are tough to locate today.

I forgot to make the repo public. It's up now!

I built a Win 3.1 app during a company hackathon just for fun. Here, I detail learnings and process for how a new old app can be created with the aid of modern tools and hindsight of old technologies. And perhaps what lessons can it offer us today.

Without the benefit of modern libraries and languages, I had to read up and take care of many low level details, socket programming, HTTP, JSON parsing, UI design in code all under tight memory constraints. Nevertheless, it was a terrific lesson in understanding how things work under the hood.

I had to do things the old-fashioned way reading books and header files due to the dearth of online documentation. I can empathise with the plight of the programmers of yesteryears who had to code without the benefit of online search engines.

With this blog post, I hope you'll find it interesting to learn about developing a modern-ancient app for Win 3.1.

https://github.com/yeokm1/w31slack https://github.com/yeokm1/http-to-https-proxy

My colleague who sits beside me is okay with it :)