Chat with an AI using PumpkinOS

In this article we will make a custom version of gpt4all-chat that runs as a server, accepting queries from a remote client. The client, as you may have inferred from the title, runs inside PumpkinOS. For those not familiar with gpt4all-chat, it is a "Cross platform Qt based GUI for GPT4All versions with GPT-J as …

Zig meets PumpkinOS

Having recently found the Zig programming language, I asked myself: what would it take to code a PumpkinOS application in Zig? Now, before we start I should warn you that I had never programmed in Zig before. What I will show here is a proof of concept containing a pretty simple Zig program integrated with …

PumpkinOS, Busybox and Linux

PumpkinOS, in its current form, runs as a normal application on a host operating system, either Windows or a full GNU/Linux OS like Ubuntu. It is convenient because you can use the host OS as a development environment, where the build tool chain is installed. But I was wondering what it would take to run …

Here Be Signed Dragons

While porting the PalmOS game Elite for PumpkinOS I stumbled upon a subtle bug. Consider this simplified code: If PrefGetAppPreferences returns noPreferenceFound, meaning the requested preference was not found, what is it going to be? If or Else? It turns out the answer depends on the environment on which the application runs. If this code …

A hairy bitmap problem

In PalmOS bitmaps come in many flavors, but they all have a common header. Take, for example, the "Version 0" bitmap, available since PalmOS 1.0: The header can be followed by more fields, in case of later versions, and then by pixel data. The whole structure (header plus data) is usually stored on bitmap resources …