Show HN: My friend and his AI homies wrote SGI Indy emulator in Rust
IRIS is a new SGI Indy emulator written in Rust with assistance from AI models like Claude and Gemini. It successfully boots IRIX 6.5 and 5.3, supporting networking, a framebuffer, and X11 graphics. The project was driven by curiosity and the experimental use of AI in coding, with contributions welcome from the community.
- ▪IRIS is an SGI Indy (MIPS R4400) emulator that boots IRIX 6.5 and 5.3 to a usable system with shell, networking, and X11 support.
- ▪The emulator was developed using Rust with significant code contributions from AI models, primarily Claude and some from Gemini.
- ▪It includes advanced features like a Cranelift JIT compiler for MIPS-to-x86_64 translation, copy-on-write disk overlays, and snapshot support for state rollback.
- ▪Networking works with ping, telnet, and FTP, and the REX3 graphics subsystem supports JIT compilation for improved performance.
- ▪The project is open for contributions, with build options optimized for speed and headless operation for automation.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Me and my homies Claude and Gemini present: IRIS — Irresponsible Rust IRIX Simulator An SGI Indy emulator, vibed into existence with Rust and AI assistance. Boots IRIX 6.5 and 5.3. Has networking. Has a framebuffer. Q&A Q: What is it? A: An SGI Indy (MIPS R4400) emulator. Emulates enough hardware that IRIX boots to a usable system: shell, networking, X11, the works. Q: But why? A: Wanted to see how far vibe coding could go, and to learn some Rust along the way. Q: You could have improved MAME. A: Didn't seem like fun. Q: So did you learn Rust? A: LOL, my brain hurts. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Q: What LLMs did you use? A: Mostly Claude, some Gemini. They wrote a lot of the hard parts. (This was written by Claude, the humble AI assistant).
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at GitHub.