A new application called WinGPT has emerged for owners of vintage Windows 3.1 PCs, allowing them to experience OpenAI's ChatGPT technology on their retro equipment. The project is the brainchild of a developer who also created Windle, a Wordle clone adapted for Microsoft's Windows 3.1 operating system.
In a recent Hacker News thread, the anonymous developer stated, "I didn’t want my Gateway 4DX2-66 from 1993 to be left out of the AI revolution, so I built an AI Assistant for Windows 3.1, based on the OpenAI API."
WinGPT is coded in C and utilizes Microsoft's standard Windows API in conjunction with OpenAI's API server. It connects via TLS 1.3, eliminating the need for a separate modern PC. Achieving compatibility with Windows 3.1 came with a few challenges, like dealing with memory segmentation architecture on 16-bit variants of the operating system and creating a user interface (UI) for the app.
Neowin reports that ChatGPT responses in this app are concise due to the limited memory support that is unable to manage conversation context. The developer also used Borland's Image Editor, a Microsoft Paint clone, to create the ICO file for WinGPT's icon.
Designing the UI elements in C posed additional challenges for the developer, who explained, "I built most of the UI in C directly, meaning that each UI component had to be manually constructed in code. I was surprised that the set of standard controls available to use by any program with Windows 3.1 is incredibly limited. You have some controls you’d expect — push buttons, check boxes, radio buttons, edit boxes — but any other control you might need, including those used across the operating system itself, aren’t available."
This innovative blend of modern AI technology with historical operating systems reminiscent of Windows 3.1 showcases the expanding capabilities and adaptability of AI solutions. Furthermore, it demonstrates the continued importance of compatibility between current and legacy systems.
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