4 ms·

Anyone else instantly turned away by the LLM emoji bullet points? This project could be the work of an enthusiastic developer with a deep understanding/love of

by janice1999 1y ago

Anyone else instantly turned away by the LLM emoji bullet points? This project could be the work of an enthusiastic developer with a deep understanding/love of the 80286 or LLM slop based on regurgitated code stolen from years of hard work by dedicated retro emulator developers. Unfair or not, emoji bullet points do not give confidence it's the first.

tab8000 1y ago
Looking at the commits, for me it seems to be LLM generated. Claude is even mentioned in one of them [0]. [0] https://github.com/xrip/pico-286/commit/d7fd03193fa3f406758a9927f625f4cc729f5c35 https://github.com/xrip/pico-286/commit/d7fd03193fa3f406758a...
rasz 1y ago
Code is also LLMed + no screenshots, no videos, no software compatibility listed, no github issues/error reports and nobody on the googlable internet ever ran this. No idea whats going on.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  Russian site, fwiw.
- xrip 1y ago
  [dead]
peterfirefly 1y ago
At a first glance, it looks cleaner than a lot of real emulator code I've seen. What would you do if you only spoke English and Russian was the global language?
- dpoloncsak 1y ago
  Probably release it in English, and not blindly trust an LLM to accurately translate something I am about to post online if I am unable to verify it for accuracy.
  - peterfirefly 1y ago
    If this is LLM translated then I'm very impressed! https://github.com/xrip/pico-286/issues/28 https://github.com/xrip/pico-286/issues/28
    - xrip 1y ago
      Check the commits chain. LLM write wonderfull stub but not realy working code, and then i've cleaned and fixed it down. Also mapdrive.asm writen by me. In other words - llm was a good helper.
      - dpoloncsak 1y ago
        Yeah, I had no doubt you wrote this code. This is way above what I think an LLM could currently handle by itself, in my opinion
rep_lodsb 1y ago
Not sure if it's 100% slop, but as someone knowledgeable about older x86 processors, I can say after a casual look through "src/emulator/cpu.c" that the code is pretty terrible and often wrong. For example, "subtract with carry" simply adds the carry to the second operand before doing the subtraction, which will wrap around to zero if it's 0xffff; this doesn't affect the result, but the carry out will be incorrectly cleared. Shift with a count of zero updates the flags, which it doesn't on real hardware. Probably many more subtle bugs with the flags as well. It can't really be called a 286 emulator either, because it only runs in real mode! For some reason there is already code in there to handle the 32-bit addressing of the 386, but it can't have been written by someone who actually understands how the address size override works - it changes both the size and the encoding of the address register(s), "AX+BX" is never a thing, nor is "EBX+ESI" (etc) used if there is only an operand size override. Also what looks like a (human?) copy-paste mistake with "EBX" in a place where it should be "EAX". At least all that code is #ifdef'd out. And rather than running a real BIOS, it appears to handle its functions in the INT emulation code, but what is there looks too incomplete to support any real software.
- peterfirefly 1y ago
  There is emulation code for the PIC (interrupt controller) and PIT (timer) + various other stuff. The intcall86() filters out and handles INT 10h/13h/etc but everything else is emulated "for real": ip/cs/flags are pushed, new cs:ip set, etc. There is an 8KB BIOS of some sort defined as a big array which should handle boot and hardware interrupts. > Probably many more subtle bugs with the flags as well. Sure. And lots of subtle bugs in general. Which is fine for someone's personal fun side project.
  - ForOldHack 1y ago
    Since it's 286, can it run the cursed Xenix 286? Do hacked GDTs work?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]

tab8000 1y ago

Looking at the commits, for me it seems to be LLM generated. Claude is even mentioned in one of them [0]. [0] https://github.com/xrip/pico-286/commit/d7fd03193fa3f406758a9927f625f4cc729f5c35 https://github.com/xrip/pico-286/commit/d7fd03193fa3f406758a...

rasz 1y ago

Code is also LLMed + no screenshots, no videos, no software compatibility listed, no github issues/error reports and nobody on the googlable internet ever ran this. No idea whats going on.

actionfromafar 1y ago
Russian site, fwiw.
xrip 1y ago
[dead]

peterfirefly 1y ago

At a first glance, it looks cleaner than a lot of real emulator code I've seen. What would you do if you only spoke English and Russian was the global language?

dpoloncsak 1y ago
Probably release it in English, and not blindly trust an LLM to accurately translate something I am about to post online if I am unable to verify it for accuracy.
- peterfirefly 1y ago
  If this is LLM translated then I'm very impressed! https://github.com/xrip/pico-286/issues/28 https://github.com/xrip/pico-286/issues/28
  - xrip 1y ago
    Check the commits chain. LLM write wonderfull stub but not realy working code, and then i've cleaned and fixed it down. Also mapdrive.asm writen by me. In other words - llm was a good helper.
    - dpoloncsak 1y ago
      Yeah, I had no doubt you wrote this code. This is way above what I think an LLM could currently handle by itself, in my opinion

rep_lodsb 1y ago

Not sure if it's 100% slop, but as someone knowledgeable about older x86 processors, I can say after a casual look through "src/emulator/cpu.c" that the code is pretty terrible and often wrong. For example, "subtract with carry" simply adds the carry to the second operand before doing the subtraction, which will wrap around to zero if it's 0xffff; this doesn't affect the result, but the carry out will be incorrectly cleared. Shift with a count of zero updates the flags, which it doesn't on real hardware. Probably many more subtle bugs with the flags as well. It can't really be called a 286 emulator either, because it only runs in real mode! For some reason there is already code in there to handle the 32-bit addressing of the 386, but it can't have been written by someone who actually understands how the address size override works - it changes both the size and the encoding of the address register(s), "AX+BX" is never a thing, nor is "EBX+ESI" (etc) used if there is only an operand size override. Also what looks like a (human?) copy-paste mistake with "EBX" in a place where it should be "EAX". At least all that code is #ifdef'd out. And rather than running a real BIOS, it appears to handle its functions in the INT emulation code, but what is there looks too incomplete to support any real software.

peterfirefly 1y ago
There is emulation code for the PIC (interrupt controller) and PIT (timer) + various other stuff. The intcall86() filters out and handles INT 10h/13h/etc but everything else is emulated "for real": ip/cs/flags are pushed, new cs:ip set, etc. There is an 8KB BIOS of some sort defined as a big array which should handle boot and hardware interrupts. > Probably many more subtle bugs with the flags as well. Sure. And lots of subtle bugs in general. Which is fine for someone's personal fun side project.
- ForOldHack 1y ago
  Since it's 286, can it run the cursed Xenix 286? Do hacked GDTs work?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]