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The AI patched a 1991 game in five minutes so his kid could play it

A father bought an old Pentium machine partly for retro games and found a childhood favourite, a 1991 learning game, froze the whole PC every time it loaded on the real hardware. He handed the AI the original game files. In five minutes it had taken the program apart, traced the hang to a sound check that waits forever on modern sound cards, and written a three byte patch into a copy of the file. The patched game worked on the first try, ready for his son.

How it works

  1. Describe the freeze
  2. The AI disassembles the program and traces the sound routine
  3. Finds a wait loop that never ends on newer sound cards
  4. Three byte patch written to a copy
  5. Game runs first try

Why it’s worth knowing

The fix is three bytes at one exact address, found by reading a 35 year old program the way its author wrote it.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on reddit.com. See the original ↗

Upgraded prompt

A ready-to-use prompt for this idea, built from research on what makes AI agents do the job right: who the AI should be, the exact steps, and a check to make sure it was done the way you wanted.

1Who the AI should be
2The prompt, with the steps
3The check when it’s done
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