badmojo wrote on Today, 10:32:

Kekkula wrote on Yesterday, 15:51:

Sorry but meaning of this thread is not to start any ai discussion.

Too late 😅

My hope is that over time the insta-rage will die down and AI discussions can happen thoughtfully wherever they appears on the forum - it's bound to keep coming up.

Oh well. Ironically, it's like with AI itself. Once the spirit is out of the bottle.. 😟

Cyberdyne wrote on Yesterday, 15:25:

Still do not understand the viceral hate of fruits of AI. Soon we will have allmost all modern drivers for DOS and Windows 3.1x and 9x. Wtf is the harm?

That's true and it makes me feel a bit melancholic, to be honest.

On one hand, AI can assist driver development such as writting USB 3 drivers (xhci98) or graphics drivers (Velocity9x) for Windows 9x.
Since these are rather large projects that would take years to be developed by a single person all alone.

Here, I see the use, the chance. AI/LLM is like a smart compiler/IDE that completes/fixes code.

It's like the computer aboard the NCC-1701D which gives precise answers to precise questions.

It's used as an assistant that helps but doesn't replace human thinking.
The crew members can understand/fix/repair the computer.

By contrast, in TNG episode about planet Aldea, the Custodian is a computer that controlles everything in daily life but the Aldeans have totally forgotten how it works.
They entrust the computer to handle everything for them, so they don't need to know about the details.

So we see that on other hand, careless use of AI leads to AI slop and people don't learn anything by just using it.

And that's a bit saddening, because the retro/vintage computing scene always had been a counter culture to the mainstream.
It was about fixing beloved things and taking care of them, there was an emotional bond involved.

People into, say, the C64 hobby weren't mere consumers, video game players or users
but also dedicated coders, chip music musicians, pixel artists and modders.
That sort of geek culture was a charming, it gave people something to hold onto. Like an anchor in our modern days.

If AI now starts to invade this safe space, too, then what happens to these people?
Will they fight AI, embrace AI or simply leave the scene behind? I don't know, but it worries me.

I mean, I myself just recently asked an LLM about how DirectDraw (DirectX 2) could be ported back to Windows 3.1+Win32s.
The LLM provided me with a highly complex code for an DDraw to WinG wrapper.
I didn't test it yet, but most of it seemed plausible at first glance.

I should be happy now; after all, I opened a thread about that topic once and lacked the knowledge to do it myself.
Which I still do lack, by the way. And that saddens me a bit.
I could try to learn it, but I'm already superflous in my own project.

That draws the point what the point of all this is.
Why keeping the old technology alive and still improve it via dedicated people if AI makes everything exchangeable?

Retro/vintage computing used to be about a society of kind weirdos who did strange, yet charming stuff.
Like grandmas who did knitting on their rocker chair.
The demoscene comes to mind. It's amazing if human beings can do the sheer impossible on limited hardware.
But if an AI does it in no time, on demand, then what does this to the psyche of creative people?

Also, what about history? Until now, everything was mostly human made.
People into retro/vintage hobby either wrote new software for old stuff or released patches for the vintage software.

But what if AI now disassembles whole vintage software on the fly, adds new 21st century features and re-assembles it in no time?
Then where's the point to still explore an 1984 era Unix or to release patches for it that otherwise had needed lots of dedication?

Under normal circumstance the community would be happy and amazed that the old OS was updated by a fellow computer fan.
The community would talk about it and discuss how it was done, what else could be improved.

Edit: To go back on topic: I remember reading that some other places on the web do discuss using "AI tags".
HaD has an "llm-assisted" tag, for example. Maybe something like this could be applied here?
So that perhaps threads/topics containing AI/LLM could be excluded from view/search?

I'm all about burning down the datacenters if we have a glimpse of AI plotting against us or taking away most jobs.
Meanwhile i'm using it for hobby projects and its a game changer. So far I made a memory manager to expand my 286 conventional memory without the use of EMS , the guguglitos sim for dos , and a new version in 3d with multicore and a lot of features. It has given me, a "Hello world" level programmer the ability to run wild with my imagination. I'm certainly going to use it for more retro projects....I just need a bigger Claude plan

There are already dozens of people using ai to do the exact same thing. The amount of duplicative work being shared is going to go through the roof. Likewise, the amount of incomplete work is going to go through the roof, where people drop their announcement and disappear. Splitting the topics by an ai support distinction is only going to serve to fragment and create even more confusion in the long run of what is even worth looking at. If there is any chance to have enough people working together on the same thing, that is going to be better. But I can't say we can keep splitting our time more for yet another project -- there is already too much just recently started, and that is going to continue.

MarmotaArmy wrote on Today, 12:38:

I'm all about burning down the datacenters if we have a glimpse of AI plotting against us or taking away most jobs.
Meanwhile i'm using it for hobby projects and its a game changer. So far I made a memory manager to expand my 286 conventional memory without the use of EMS , the guguglitos sim for dos , and a new version in 3d with multicore and a lot of features. It has given me, a "Hello world" level programmer the ability to run wild with my imagination. I'm certainly going to use it for more retro projects....I just need a bigger Claude plan

That reminds me of painting by colour books.
It's fun, sure, but does it help anyone to become a better person/painter?
Also, should the finished paintings be displayed next to fully hand drawn/painted pictures?

In the CB/ham radio hobby people are proud about do-it-yourself, about homebrew.
A big part of their identity is to build from scratch and to not to use commercial products. It's about pride and self-respect.
Radio amateurs who don't build on their own are humorously being called "socket amateurs" or "kit amateurs".
Hams or maker who use ready-made modules (lego bricks) may or may no fall into same category.

dosmax wrote on Today, 11:08:

Count that list against the rest.

If you are a professional, you either live in an enviably old-fashioned bubble, or know well enough that there aren't may left who don't use AI one way or the other. Same is true for your typical artist (in the sense of e.g. game asset artists, not necessarily art-artists).

I'm sorry but I see programmers who use AI and do vibe coding cheating on similar Par as kids cheating maths exercises by using a calculator.
There is so much less security holes and cascading bugs in human written code from experience and professional training.
Also AI does security testing on its slop and finds many bugs and does many regressions is why windows 11 is like windows Vista Beta
Linux is catching up to windows in slop vibe bloat; kiddies pretending to be programmers because they got some claude credits and making clones.
Also what programmer will make a better language if nobody does their own stuff to inspire invention.
There has been plenty of debunking of AI programming capability after all its only as good as the people who made it.
Toys powered by tokens.

Jo22 wrote on Today, 13:44:

That reminds me of painting by colour books. It's fun, sure, but does it help anyone to become a better person/painter? Also, sh […]
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MarmotaArmy wrote on Today, 12:38:

I'm all about burning down the datacenters if we have a glimpse of AI plotting against us or taking away most jobs.
Meanwhile i'm using it for hobby projects and its a game changer. So far I made a memory manager to expand my 286 conventional memory without the use of EMS , the guguglitos sim for dos , and a new version in 3d with multicore and a lot of features. It has given me, a "Hello world" level programmer the ability to run wild with my imagination. I'm certainly going to use it for more retro projects....I just need a bigger Claude plan

That reminds me of painting by colour books.
It's fun, sure, but does it help anyone to become a better person/painter?
Also, should the finished paintings be displayed next to fully hand drawn/painted pictures?

In the CB/ham radio hobby people are proud about do-it-yourself, about homebrew.
A big part of their identity is to build from scratch and to not to use commercial products. It's about pride and self-respect.
Radio amateurs who don't build on their own are humorously being called "socket amateurs" or "kit amateurs".
Hams or maker who use ready-made modules (lego bricks) may or may no fall into same category.

I'm having fun, also married with young twins. So I don't have a minute to spare to re-learn coding, certainly not to the level of complex graphics functions , assembler or obscure memory handling.

@ zapbuzz:

Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't shed a single tear if AI went away tomorrow and everything went to where it was five years ago.

Won't happen though. Both coding and content/asset creation industries have already adapted AI so deeply that there is basically no turning back aymore. And I'm pretty certain a lot of other fields aren't far behind. All that is left now is adjusting to this new reality.

It's not just 'kiddies pretending to be programmers'. Those exist too obviously, but what's actually happening at breakneck speed is 'former programmers becoming code reviewers'. Many, probably most, not even voluntarily. By now a wonder would be required to turn that back. You can of course hope for one, just don't trust it will happen. 😀

Frankly, I think a separate subforum idea is really solid. I do use LLMs for a lot of retro stuff, but I just never share it online, mostly because I really don't want to hear someone say "booo, slop" about something I spent months on 😁

On the other hand it's not like LLMs are well trained to deal with retro software, so you can't one shot these things. So IMO some space to share tricks and techniques would be really interesting.

dosmax wrote on Today, 15:31:

@ zapbuzz: […]
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@ zapbuzz:

Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't shed a single tear if AI went away tomorrow and everything went to where it was five years ago.

Won't happen though. Both coding and content/asset creation industries have already adapted AI so deeply that there is basically no turning back aymore. And I'm pretty certain a lot of other fields aren't far behind. All that is left now is adjusting to this new reality.

It's not just 'kiddies pretending to be programmers'. Those exist too obviously, but what's actually happening at breakneck speed is 'former programmers becoming code reviewers'. Many, probably most, not even voluntarily. By now a wonder would be required to turn that back. You can of course hope for one, just don't trust it will happen. 😀

They said the same about cocaine in the US, but the government ultimately classified it as a narcotic. I don't see any cocaine farms in the US, do you? If the government either bans it outright or highly regulates its use/sale, it's just another MySpace.

MarmotaArmy wrote on Today, 14:10:

Jo22 wrote on Today, 13:44:

That reminds me of painting by colour books. It's fun, sure, but does it help anyone to become a better person/painter? Also, sh […]
Show full quote

MarmotaArmy wrote on Today, 12:38:

I'm all about burning down the datacenters if we have a glimpse of AI plotting against us or taking away most jobs.
Meanwhile i'm using it for hobby projects and its a game changer. So far I made a memory manager to expand my 286 conventional memory without the use of EMS , the guguglitos sim for dos , and a new version in 3d with multicore and a lot of features. It has given me, a "Hello world" level programmer the ability to run wild with my imagination. I'm certainly going to use it for more retro projects....I just need a bigger Claude plan

That reminds me of painting by colour books.
It's fun, sure, but does it help anyone to become a better person/painter?
Also, should the finished paintings be displayed next to fully hand drawn/painted pictures?

In the CB/ham radio hobby people are proud about do-it-yourself, about homebrew.
A big part of their identity is to build from scratch and to not to use commercial products. It's about pride and self-respect.
Radio amateurs who don't build on their own are humorously being called "socket amateurs" or "kit amateurs".
Hams or maker who use ready-made modules (lego bricks) may or may no fall into same category.

I'm having fun, also married with young twins. So I don't have a minute to spare to re-learn coding, certainly not to the level of complex graphics functions , assembler or obscure memory handling.

That's okay, but then please why are you here? 🙂 What does fascinate you about this place? 😃
It's not meant as a criticism, but as an underlying question (also a question to yourself).
After all, Vogons is essentially a place where either fans of old video games or the PC hardware "hoarders" meet.
It's one of the last "old-school" forums that managed to keep being very alive all the time.
People who come here are intentionally living a bit in the past, also. For their own sanity, among other things.
They usually still try to have Windows 9x or XP rigs as daily drivers, for example.
There are also more and more programmers and hw developers, of course. 😃
Though the coding fraction among of "us" is still rather new, I think. Relatively speaking.

Edit: Just to be clear, I didn't mean to say that you don't belong here.
What I wonder is more what does attract you about such a retro/vintage game forum.

Edit: My reply is somewhat badly worded, sorry.
Anotherconcern that comes to my mind is: where does fresh AI training data come from?
If a place like Vogons is full of vibe-coding threads then what happens to the AI data?
If the last big places of old-school coders become places of AI users, too?
Isn't that causing a downwards-spiral of some sorts?

Edit:

AI is a huge and pervasive part of things now, including vintage games, computing, programming etc, there have been interesting discussions already in the middle of other regular threads, its fine

That's also a very good point, I think.
Some of the most interesting discussions happened inside existing threads.
If AI/LLM was forbidden to be mentioned in regular conversations in regular threads,
then a lot of interesting ideas may never see the day of light.
It's really tricky. 😟 Perhaps peoples shouldn't try to rush out a solution here.
A good solution may take some time and the christmas time is already near, also.

kingcake wrote on Yesterday, 23:42:

No one hates the "fruits". People hate the inflated hardware prices, job losses, energy usage, water usage, noise pollution, and the list goes on.

Hating won't solve anything. When cars appeared the pollution (with smoke, but also phonic pollution) became a new problem. Yet the cars stayed. It will be the same with the AI.

And people are hypocrites. They "hate" AI, but they like using it. If nobody would use it, it would die.

@Jo22

I love old computer's my first was a MSX-2. I mostly like to make interesting setups, install the O.S , configure it to run at a good performance and without errors, and then play games or use them as a hobby. I still remember my K6-2+ setup , with a compaq camaro motherboard and some wpcredit tweaks I squeezed its performance for a LAN party and ran unreal tournament as well as some P3 450 and P3 500. Or simple having my IBM Valuepoint 386 downloading files from my local LAN, and then running Fastdoom in it.
So mostly i like to use them and test their limits, And with AI at hand they can be used in new, interesting ways. For example , drivers. ... How much time until we have a GTX 1080 in a win98 system, beacause of reasons?

Edit: I have like 2 -3 hours at week tops available for retro pcs

RaverX wrote on Today, 17:55:

kingcake wrote on Yesterday, 23:42:

No one hates the "fruits". People hate the inflated hardware prices, job losses, energy usage, water usage, noise pollution, and the list goes on.

Hating won't solve anything. When cars appeared the pollution (with smoke, but also phonic pollution) became a new problem. Yet the cars stayed. It will be the same with the AI.

And people are hypocrites. They "hate" AI, but they like using it. If nobody would use it, it would die.

I never use AI because I hate it, those who created it, those who try to force me to use it, those who are too lazy to work for themselves. Your theory holds no ground. It's opinion based on something other than fact.

ldeveraux wrote on Today, 16:56:

They said the same about cocaine in the US, but the government ultimately classified it as a narcotic. I don't see any cocaine farms in the US, do you? If the government either bans it outright or highly regulates its use/sale, it's just another MySpace.

I'd say anything even remotely like that that would surely classify as the wonder I spoke of above. 😀

kingcake wrote on Yesterday, 23:42:

Kekkula wrote on Yesterday, 15:51:

Sorry but meaning of this thread is not to start any ai discussion. There's plenty of reasons to hate ai living next to data cen […]
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Sorry but meaning of this thread is not to start any ai discussion.
There's plenty of reasons to hate ai living next to data centres, farmers not having water, elevated electricity prices... etc
And there's just as many benefits of ai.
But I don't think this is the place for those discussions, and easiest solution is not to prohibit discussion (North Korean way), but just separate folks. Time will smooth opinions eventually but now is just too early days for fruitful discussions.

No one hates the "fruits". People hate the inflated hardware prices, job losses, energy usage, water usage, noise pollution, and the list goes on.

All of which are due to corporate welfare that the general public pays dearly to subsidize.
Likely a regional issue but most data centers are also driving a large percentage of the national "stationary" fuel oil use, even charting in that list means extreme fuel use which is definitely not appreciated during heat season rationing. (Some areas are limiting fuel oil deliveries to 100 gallons)

With the very poor kshaped job market nobody normal can afford their power, water and light to triple, let alone shipping and delivery surcharges going up exponentially.
....

On the original topic most forums have a basement forum that you have to opt into to see it's results.

Such a forum is also useful for mods to use as a dumping ground for mildly ot or otherwise not really deserving of deletion topics that could muck up the rest of the forum.

This allows interested parties to thoughtfully discuss issues like ai while not flooding the traditional forums with noise.

The thread starter or mods could decide to plant certain threads there fully at their discretion while avoiding a complete ban on a topic, just a moderation option when things are likely to get out of hand or are obviously low effort material.

Another forum in Heart of Gold for topics that are primarily AI doesn't seem a bad idea, but an important question would be: what to call it?

Starship Titanic? Infinite Improbability Drive? Informational Illusion?

ratfink wrote on Today, 20:27:

Starship Titanic? Infinite Improbability Drive? Informational Illusion?

😂

Idiot Savant?