I built a ChatGPT client for Mac OS 9

greystash · May 8, 2023

Over the last few weeks I have been building LegacyAI, which is a ChatGPT client built specifically for Mac OS 9.

LegacyAI allows you to access OpenAI's ChatGPT from your Mac OS 9 Desktop. You can choose AI models, save conversations, and can set up your own customised proxy server (if required).

Requirements:

A Macintosh computer running Mac OS 9 (I haven't tested Mac OS 8 yet)
Preferably a G3 Processor (prior PPC models are untested)
At least 16Mb Ram
1Mb Disk Space

Download here

To download on an older Macintosh you can access the website here.

Nixontheknight · May 9, 2023

I have a 603 based 6200 I can test with, once I get all the parts to fix the hard drive, I'll let you know how it goes, maybe with an update

3lectr1cPPC · May 9, 2023

Could test with my 3400c/240 as well

macuserman · May 9, 2023

greystash said:
Over the last few weeks I have been building LegacyAI, which is a ChatGPT client built specifically for Mac OS 9.

LegacyAI allows you to access OpenAI's ChatGPT from your Mac OS 9 Desktop. You can choose AI models, save conversations, and can set up your own customised proxy server (if required).

Requirements:

A Macintosh computer running Mac OS 9 (I haven't tested Mac OS 8 yet)

Preferably a G3 Processor (prior PPC models are untested)

At least 16Mb Ram

1Mb Disk Space

Download here

To download on an older Macintosh you can access the website here.

Nice! That's a bit of fun!

greystash · May 9, 2023

Thank you! Testing would be fantastic! I only have my PowerBook Ti at hand right now, everything else is packed temporarily

jdcurry · May 9, 2023

Having some difficulty with my aircard at the moment, but I'll try again soon using an ethernet cable. Looks promising!

greystash · May 9, 2023

jdcurry said:
Having some difficulty with my aircard at the moment, but I'll try again soon using an ethernet cable. Looks promising!

Hmm that's interesting! Thanks for letting me know, I'll have to test that. Have you got anything set within the Preferences for "Custom Proxy Server"? You will get that error if it can't connect to a server.

Update:
There is now a carbon version available for Mac OS 9 - OSX 10.6.8. It has also been confirmed to work on Mac OS 8.6

robin-fo · May 9, 2023

Your UI looks very nice and clean! However, I noticed a glitch here:

Bildschirmfoto 2023-05-09 um 14.17.34.png

Could you also implement resizing of the window?

It's so cool to have brand new software for the classic Mac OS! Thank you (and others) so much!

Edit: Maybe the glitch is due to my Mac OS 9.1 installation. However, I don't know how this could have happened.

Phipli · May 9, 2023

robin-fo said:
Edit: Maybe the glitch is due to my Mac OS 9.1 installation. However, I don't know how this could have happened.

The "glitch" is two text fields on top of each other, plus the text being larger than its text field. If I had to guess, I'd say the issue is that you don't have the custom font @greystash used. The solution is for either for you to install the missing font, greystash to use a more common font, or to use an image of the text instead of a text field.

jdcurry · May 9, 2023

greystash said:
Hmm that's interesting! Thanks for letting me know, I'll have to test that. Have you got anything set within the Preferences for "Custom Proxy Server"? You will get that error if it can't connect to a server.

Update:
There is now a carbon version available for Mac OS 9 - OSX 10.6.8. It has also been confirmed to work on Mac OS 8.6

Oh, I doubt it’s anything with the software. I think I need to adjust my settings between OS 9 and the router so they work together. I thought setting up a static IP would resolve the issue but apparently not.

paws · May 10, 2023

That's pretty interesting! Well done.

To be clear, you are running some sort of proxy, so all prompts go (in cleartext) via a server that you control, and from there to OpenAI's server?

(Also, as someone who also dabbles in Mac coding, can I ask how it's made? Compilers, frameworks etc.?)

greystash · May 10, 2023

Thanks for the heads up @robin-fo! I'll take a look at that soon. It could be a font rendering issue too (I think that part is rendered in a canvas), I only tested the app with the default system font.

Thanks @paws!
Yes that's correct, I tried to make that as clear as possible on the website, as far as I've seen you can't really get around the HTTPS/TLS issues on Mac OS 9. It's still something I want to work towards but I'm not sure if it's possible.
I built it with REALbasic 5.5.5 which had good support for making HTTP requests, so it was an easy candidate. The app sends prompts to a Python proxy server, forwards it to OpenAI via their API over HTTPS, gets a response and formats it in a readable format for RB, then sends the formatted response to RB.

greystash · May 10, 2023

One last update:
There was a bug which broke the update flow, so anyone using the version 1.0-1.1 (especially Carbon) apps won't download the correct updates. If you want to fix this you will need to download the new version (I know it's annoying

). See the update notes here.

greystash · May 11, 2023

I've just released v1.3 which has support for GPT-3.5. This is one of the best AI models, so responses should be a lot better now!
Next update I will focus on bug fixes and looking into GPT-4

paws · May 12, 2023

Finally got a chance to try it out. This was also my first GPT session. I asked some programming questions, it was genuinely helpful explaining what a bit of PPC assembler did (line-by-line explanation and a summary). I did get some "confidently incorrect" answers in some cases, but I suppose it's good to not outsource all of my thinking... yet.

Overall, this is a genuinely useful tool to have for programming, especially as most of the knowledge gathering resources I'd normally use are inaccessible on OS9. Thank you for making it!

I'm curious about setting up my own proxy, is there a description of how to do that somewhere and what to use?

nickpunt · May 12, 2023

This is so cool, I was just scheming on how to get ChatGPT on my SE30! I'd love if this was available for System 7 so I could run it on 68k systems to get a proper vintage-future AI in the box. The hold up is TLS/HTTPS but perhaps it could be done through a web rendering proxy or via something that sends HTTP instead of HTTPS, maybe build it in Hypercard using TCP to hit a local server that hosts the app?

greystash · May 13, 2023

@paws I'm gald it's been useful! I'm going to put together a guide for setting up a proxy server this week and will post it on Mac-Classic.com, so keep an eye out there.

@nickpunt I have a test 68k version built and running, I just need comlete the remaining features the other builds have. It required almost a full rebuild so it's been a lot more work to get running. I'm aiming to publish it within the next few days

robin-fo · May 13, 2023

Btw. what toolchain/toolkit did you use for the MacOS 9 version?

jdcurry · May 14, 2023

Yes, I'm quite interested in how the program was built as I'd like to try my hand at programming something for OS 7-9.

paws · May 14, 2023

Greystash said above it's written in RealBasic 5.5, which is available on the Macintosh Garden.

I've not used that myself, but as I understand it combines an approachable language with good support for making Mac-like UIs (as LegacyAI shows!). I personally have always heard bad things about Basic as a language, but honestly I think most of the critiques stem from the simplistic microcomputer dialects of the early 80's. The language had by all accounts evolved considerably in the 90's when RealBasic is from, so it's probably worth checking out even if it's not fashionable. This is also the second RealBasic classic Mac app to emerge in recent years, the other being the RSS reader whose name escapes me right now.

For comparison, I'm writing an app in C++ much as most Mac apps were written in the 90's, and it's a ton of work to do simple things even though I have a good grasp of that language and programming in general. I would definitely not recommend anyone start out there unless there's some specific need or personality defect that forces you to...

I built a ChatGPT client for Mac OS 9

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