DUNGEON (Zork) & MIT's 545 Tech. Sq.

Johnny Billquist wrote: A quick scan of my MDL manuals: "The MDL Programming Language" by Galley & Pfister and "The MDL Programming Environment" by Lebling (both published by Laboratory for Computer Science @ MIT) show that MDL only ran on ITS, Tenex, and TOPS-20. SDS, on the other hand, ran the CP-V operating system. So I suppose that Zork never did make it onto an SDS machine. I do, however, clearly remember an SDS machine on the 9th floor at 545 Tech Sq. during my tour back in the early 80s. I was a youngin' though, and was just in heaven being so close to all these cool machines which I had only been accessing through a TIP from across the country (via the RAND-TIP in Los Angeles). Furthermore, I only had access to a printing terminal back home (300 baud, thermal paper, acoustic (loose fitting, noisy) coupler) -- so once I was given the tour, and then a seat at a CRT with a 9600 baud connection, well, I don't think I slept for 48 hours... Those were the days... only taking a break at sunrise for a food run with some of the other all-nighters hanging out there. Eventually, the folks at RAND caught up with my (non-authorized) usage -- and politely asked my to cease accessing the TIP. This was my first experience of going through a "withdrawal" syndrome -- I practically lived on those MIT machines (via their Tourist accounts they gave out.) -Eric F.