Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386 • Hacker News Board

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#141

Post by kaonwarb » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:09 PM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #101

userbinator wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that hasn't been done before, and now exists. Yes someone could spend immense amounts of time and effort, but clearly no one bothered to until AI made it easier. yet the complainers will always complain because they don't have anything better to do with their own time... "bugger off!" as they say.

None of what you say answers any of my questions. It's hard to be impressed when someone purchases a new toaster, even if it's a bespoke toaster. I want to know what the author thinks he got out of this.

- Desired thing doesn't exist. - Author acts, using extremely helpful tools. - Desired thing now does exist.

Is that not enough?

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#142

Post by jggonz » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #138

jggonz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ 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 mon…

That’s all fine and I don’t think anyone can malign you for that. What we take exception to is how your project’s landing-page misrepresents the project by saying it’s “hand-written”, for example, and lacks any clear up-front AI-use disclosure.

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.

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#143

Post by pjmlp » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:14 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #52

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kinda almost makes it sound like VisiOn introduced Gates to the GUI which is not true. They were already using and developing for Macintosh machines at Microsoft and had hired Charles Simonyi from PARC with his expertise in GUI systems before Comdex 1982. The story seems to be more that seeing VisiOn gave MS the nudge to get into action on the GUI due to a sense of competition/urgenbcy from VisiOn rather than le…

Stories about Xerox PARC aside, the Apple Lisa was released to the market at the end of January 1983, and I would be surprised if Microsoft wasn't big enough/rich enough at that point to acquire at least a couple of units from the very first batch to mess around with. Windows 1.0 RTM was November 1985.

Xenix supported the Lisa, and Excel was born on the Mac Classic.

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#144

Post by cmrdporcupine » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC

gizajob wrote: post #58

incanus77 wrote: post #51

This looked great, I started reading things, and then I just kept reading and reading the voluminous description details, and it was an immediate indication to me that the whole thing was built up by Claude. Confirmed in the repo. I closed the tab. I appreciate the topic, interest, and ambition, but if a human couldn’t be bothered to create and document it, I can’t be bothered to spend my time reading about it.

Yeah if someone had spent 6 months coding this dead end from 1978 in assembly rather than getting Claude to do it in six days then I’d have given it more time too.

And now you'll understand why they didn't do that. Nobody would/will use either of them anyway. History went the way it did. All sorts of awesome things I saw at that time went nowhere. Awesomeness of the hack or depth of the skill has never equated to success in any kind of market, and the history of computing is filled with people who poured their lives into making something for love of the machine or hack or whatever and then it just sat there unused, unmarketed, or unsuccessful. I could give you a page long list of examples and I've victimized myself in the same way.

Now we can just do that much much faster.

Treat this like fan fiction. Nothing about it existing harms you in any way.

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#145

Post by rjrjrjrj » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:23 PM UTC

StilesCrisis wrote: post #120

tgv wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original MacOS lacked memory protection too. It had cooperative multi-tasking, starting at version 7. Before that, the only thing that could be launched next to the main application were "desk accessories", which were a bit of a pain to write, as they had to stay out of harm's way.

MultiFinder existed before System 7. It was just optional.

MultiFinder was introduced in System 5.

Before that, there was Switcher - not a multitasker, but did keep multiple (non-DA) applications in memory at the same time.

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#146

Post by pjmlp » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #133

garganzol wrote: post #106

LLM writes a better ASM then a C compiler? From running the demo in the browser, it seems so performance-wise and size-wise, but the ultimate test should be performed on a real hardware that I have no direct access to. Anyone can validate the performance on a real PC of the era? If it's confirmed, LLMs may be one of the ways of creating highly optimizing compilers in the future.

I've built custom exotic architectures in Verilog with their own bespoke ISAs and weird assembler and found LLMs entirely competent at writing for them, and even building compilers to target it. It's a weird world we live in now.

Yes, just like early optimising compilers eventually got their heuristics.

Many still haven't understood that dynamic compilers, and machine learning based optimisations are equally not deterministic, which is why benchmarks are hard to implement properly.

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#147

Post by pjmlp » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:28 PM UTC

RachelF wrote: post #55

userbinator wrote: post #41

I don't know why it seems reluctant to disclose AI use, because this is one of the best advertisements of Claude I've seen, and I say this as someone who has been sitting on the fence on the subject and saw a lot of slop in the past few years. If I was working in Anthropic's marketing department, this is the sort of thing I'd point to as a demo of its abilities. That said, it's not like something of this nature was t…

To me the most interesting thing here is that AI did it, albeit with very good prompting. Claude AI just created something in a few hours, perhaps, that teams of intelligent developers at the time struggled to do in years of effort.

Which is why many agencies are now delivering more with less, and still there are folks saying that won't happen to them.

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#148

Post by gizajob » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:30 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #144

gizajob wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah if someone had spent 6 months coding this dead end from 1978 in assembly rather than getting Claude to do it in six days then I’d have given it more time too.

And now you'll understand why they didn't do that. Nobody would/will use either of them anyway. History went the way it did. All sorts of awesome things I saw at that time went nowhere. Awesomeness of the hack or depth of the skill has never equated to success in any kind of market, and the history of computing is filled with people who poured their lives into making something for love of the machine or hack or whate…

My sarcasm didn’t really come through for you.

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#149

Post by cmrdporcupine » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:37 PM UTC

gizajob wrote: post #148

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now you'll understand why they didn't do that. Nobody would/will use either of them anyway. History went the way it did. All sorts of awesome things I saw at that time went nowhere. Awesomeness of the hack or depth of the skill has never equated to success in any kind of market, and the history of computing is filled with people who poured their lives into making something for love of the machine or hack or whate…

My sarcasm didn’t really come through for you.

Fair.

Also to be fair, the non-sarcastic reading of same comment would be entirely in keeping with other comments in this thread.

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#150

Post by cmrdporcupine » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:39 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #146

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've built custom exotic architectures in Verilog with their own bespoke ISAs and weird assembler and found LLMs entirely competent at writing for them, and even building compilers to target it. It's a weird world we live in now.

Yes, just like early optimising compilers eventually got their heuristics. Many still haven't understood that dynamic compilers, and machine learning based optimisations are equally not deterministic, which is why benchmarks are hard to implement properly.

Hell, the internal complexities of scheduling/branch-prediction etc inside the processor may strictly be defined as "deterministic" but in reality cannot be fully kept in the head of a software engineer at this point, too.

It's been a long time since I've worked on a machine I could describe as "understandable."

Aside: One of the niceties of using agentic LLMs to do optimization work is letting them do the drudgery of creating a pile of microbenchmarks for different scenarios (scalar popcount on a this-shaped vector, or SIMD on another? which wins? sometimes the answer is surprising!). I've built all sorts of bespoke tools / harnesses for forcing them to evaluate their findings empirically, and it's amazing what can be done that would take me weeks by hand.