jggonz

Yes, it has been really interesting running into the same blockers that the engineers building early operating systems must have ran into as well.

This SPEC.md is more of a memory dump that it chooses to use on some tasks. I was recently thinking of either:

a. splitting it into sub-spec files that can be referenced. b. getting rid of it completely to prevent the LLM from hallucinating with potentially stale information.

Yes, some people have contributed screenshots: os8088.com/hardware

256kb is the official minimum amount of RAM. 128KB should work but that's just going to let you run the kernel and some very basic built in apps.

I have serial mouse support right now (auto detected on COM1/COM2), but PS/2 mouse support is coming.

Someone was even able to get it running on a PC Transporter on an Apple IIGS. One of these: https://68kmla.org/bb/threads/setting-up-a-pc-trasporter-on-...

Yes, I'm old now and have learned all the foundational computer and hardware engineering topics the hard way over 30 years. I've earned my AI tokens of freedom. :)

os8088 is an operating system written with AI tools in x86 16-bit assembly with an optional C/C++ app porting toolchain.

It runs on anything with an x86 processor from the early 8088/8086 CPUs up to the latest CPUs. It supports CGA/Hercules + VGA. Sound Blaster, NE2000 network and MFM hard drive support is now available.

We've also ported many cool apps: MOD trackers, TexPad, MS Word 1.1a (in ASM and C), CP/M 2.2 emulator with a ton of apps and games, and several ported games from the early arcade days.

Run it in the browser at: https://os8088.com/demo

Yes, the website has a lot of AI generated content. I'm working on a redesign and tooling to edit and rewrite the content by hand.

Thank you for the idea! I was going to add a basic interpreter I've been working on in another project, but I think a port of Frotz is coming first now given how many resources are already available.

I've removed the "hand-written" language that the LLM added. I added some information to the "What it is" section on the homepage that reads "The source is real-mode NASM assembly, written with AI, and it is on GitHub."

I thought about having a big flashing heading about the use of AI, but at that point, I think it was becoming more of a warning to AI triggered people than anything useful.

^ This... I am the "llm-driver"/"creator" for os8088 and my goal is this. Just to have some fun and make something useful for people (like me) that have dozens of old computers sitting in a room.

And...I do know how to write in assembly, VHDL, and higher level languages, but I also have a life, and I much rather have an LLM write out the assembly for a hobby like this one where I wanted something in 6 days, not 6 months.

Yes, you can see the hardware we tested here: https://www.os8088.com/hardware

Yes, agree. I laughed at that when I first saw it last week. I went ahead and cleared all that up on the homepage and the README now.

I am not sure I will ever get this to protected mode... The goal was to have something running on slower, older hardware, and once protected mode comes into play, we're letting go many of the constraints that make this an interesting experiment.

Even though I've relied on AI to hammer out the assembly, it has been very educational iterating on it. You end up learning the techniques that other operating systems used to get applications to perform well on slow machines.

lol, so disappointing to see the attacks when I'm just having some fun.

Many millions so far...

I might even port over povray... :)

I agree. We've just been spending more time on the operating system than the homepage. I'm making some updates, but it's still all going to be written "through" AI for now.

If you want to try the operating system in the browser, you can try it by visiting here: https://os8088.com/demo/

"Author" of os8088 here.

That's no longer the case. Someone that is contributing to the project is using real hardware to validate the changes. You can check out some of the systems he tested it with here: https://www.os8088.com/hardware

The system does currently run with 256KB of RAM, and you can use some of the basic apps, but not all of them.

We have built in driver support now, so we will be adding network driver support soon. We just added hard drive support that is potentially a bit buggy...

Yes, it's easy to break. There's no memory protection. However, building packages, drivers, and kernel modules for it has been a fun and educational exercise in memory management.

"Author" of os8088 here. I love seeing what these early limited system could do! Someone shared a video of GOS with me after seeing what os8088 looked like.

I believe os8088 also boots now with just 128k of RAM, but it's very limited in the type of apps you can load. There's a os8088.com/hardware page where one of the contributors to the project that has been helping optimize the operating system tested it out on a bunch of different machines.

"Author" of os8088 here. That's unfortunate. This is a hobby, and yes, it's all written with Claude. I have a bunch of videos up showing the process.

I'm updating the copy of the page to make it extremely clear that it's built using AI so that we can move past that point.

"Author" of os8088 here. You're right, it's hand-prompted.

Claude's Opus and Fable have done a really great job helping me and another contributor shape this operating system. It's been a really interesting way to learn about the different techniques that other operating systems have used to get the performance we saw in LisaOS, MacOS, Windows, GEOS, etc... performance at 640x480 on an XT class machine is tricky! Also, the 64KB segment limitations were very interesting to overcome!

Author of the AI written os8088 OS here...

Thanks for sharing the promotional video for Visi On. It's cool to see how many different companies gave this a shot back in the 80s.

The graphical operating system that could have been for the IBM XT.

A MacOS-like desktop for the Intel 8086, written entirely in real-mode assembly (with Claude). Verified to run on real hardware, with FAT12/16 support, ported apps, games, Sound Blaster support and upcoming Hard Drive support.

Interesting timing and similarity with something I built last month! :)

I built https://fishygram.com with a DSL you can copy and paste into ChatGPT to build diagrams for you.

You can take a look at the examples to see what it can do.

I find this test interesting because I received an ACE score of 1, but I'm the oldest child in my household and I'm realizing that my siblings would probably score slightly higher than me... :-(

I moved out when I was around 20 before alcoholism and divorce destroyed the beautiful family dynamic that I grew up with.

This makes me want to try and understand the differences between myself and my siblings a bit more closely.

Citi is doing a great thing and it's charging a fair price. There is a benefit for all of us when businesses charge a fee for the products and services they provide: We don't take those products or services for granted.

Just because some big bank can afford to pay for your bike ride, doesn't make you entitled to ask them to do it.

I'm going to engage because there's nothing pathetic about these guys.

I bet many people said people like "Thomas Edison", "The Wright brothers", and "Steve Wozniak" were "sad and pathetic" like you say as they tinkered on their projects.

I just remembered compiling an early 2.0.xx kernel on an old 386DX AT&T server that was given to me when I was a teenager in the 90s. It spent hours doing it and I loved watching gcc take several seconds to compile each file! I also recall that the hard drive in that thing must have weighed at least 40lbs. Those were fun days!

Here's an eBay item that is pretty much exactly what I had back then: https://www.ebay.com/itm/294597619526?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=...