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

os8088.com

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

#71

Post by tgv »

throw10920 wrote: post #45
LeoPanthera wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside in the real world? Sure. Here on HN? I don't believe that.

OK, if you're so confident, surely you've gathered data that empirically shows that "virtually everyone on HN is using AI to write code and simultaneously dismisses all interesting new software as written by AI", because that's a very easy claim to prove or disprove. Can we see your results and methodology?

I think the remark was glib/sarcastic/ironic. That's frowned upon in this forum, and for good reason.

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

#72

Post by jggonz »

skissane wrote: post #36
Narishma wrote: post #7

> Hand-written real-mode 8086. No C, no linker, no runtime library. More like hand-prompted...

I’ve got nothing against AI-written code But if people are going to post it on HN, they should consider at least writing the README / main page of their website by hand It is nice to hear the human authorial voice, at least sometimes

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.

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

#73

Post by tgv »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #49

https://os8088.com/how-it-works/multitasking/ > Pre-emptive multitasking on an 8086 > Twelve task slots, 1,536 bytes of stack each, and a timer interrupt that takes the CPU away from whatever is running 18.2065 times a second. No task is asked to cooperate and no task can refuse. If you don't have protected mode, can't any program just rewrite the interrupt handler? It's not a bad system, but it sounds easy to break.

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.

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

#76

Post by afavour »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #12

It's funny how virtually everyone on HN is using AI to write code and simultaneously dismisses all interesting new software as written by AI.

For me personally there’s something deeply unsatisfying about hobby projects that are entirely AI generated. Work code is something different. I don’t have passion for a lot of that, it’s just the way I earn money.

This is never going to be a commercially viable project. It’s a wonderful idea for a hobbyist passion project. But if you’re not actually coding it yourself it feels far less interesting. I can’t really marvel at what they’ve created because I know that with a stack of tokens I could do the exact same thing myself.

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

#77

Post by jggonz »

TheFuzzball wrote: post #70
jggonz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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! Als…

Did you ask Claude to write this comment too?

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

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

#78

Post by kar1181 »

I mean this is cool, it's wholly / mostly AI gen, so it takes the wow away which I think is what foklks are reacting strongly to here.

Sadly this sort of thing is much easier now - thanks to the tooling. I speak from personal experience, I'd written some stub 32bit os' myself (by hand, pre-ai) and it is very fun. But you quickly run into walls that stop further development that aren't fun. I enjoyed poking at VGA registers, the 512 byte boot sector into real mode into protected mode dance. Setting up the global descriptor tables/page tables and the PIC/8042 controller.

But...then you get into protected mode you get a prompt up some very basic memory management and then TERMIOS...boring. Boring. Defining all the posix syscalls, boring. Building test harnesses ... boring.

Oh I need a DMA controller now because PIO is slow, FUN!!!

I've taken my toy os to basically Linux 2.0 level in a few weekends by throwing tokens at boring things and when I got to the end it was a little bit empty because although the kernel of the system was all me, and it very much was built on the skeleton I arranged I didn't understand bits now that while boring were important. And the magic ... was lost.

I'm working on a new version now where my rule is I hand type every line of code and I co-plan with the AI and write from my head. It's so slow going but the fun is in the problem solving and the design and by hand writing you keep enough of it in hand it feels yours and real.

Anyway this is a cool project, I hope the author enjoyed it and learned something, but this is the new normal now, powerful tooling means things that were novel are tokens away and so they lose some of the magic accordingly.

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

#79

Post by phendrenad2 »

andai wrote: post #66
ButlerianJihad wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't be written by LLM -- the human author has claimed copyright https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49203613

> there is no value in being a Public-Domain-Dumping-Ground. First of all, isn't that the entire point of the Internet Archive? Sounds pretty valuable to me. Second, doesn't the same issue effectively apply to everything written with the BSD or MIT license? I'm not sure I understand the point though, so I'm probably missing something.

You're not missing anything. I think this is a person trying to speak their opinion into fact by quoting themselves.

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

#80

Post by jggonz »

kar1181 wrote: post #78

I mean this is cool, it's wholly / mostly AI gen, so it takes the wow away which I think is what foklks are reacting strongly to here. Sadly this sort of thing is much easier now - thanks to the tooling. I speak from personal experience, I'd written some stub 32bit os' myself (by hand, pre-ai) and it is very fun. But you quickly run into walls that stop further development that aren't fun. I enjoyed poking at VGA reg…

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.

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