8 May
2005
8 May
'05
2:45 p.m.
Subject: Re: Infocom on PDP-11
From: Philip Pemberton <philpem at dsl.pipex.com>
Date: Sun, 08 May 2005 22:06:15 +0100
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
In message <f4eb766f05050813432f2d277a at mail.gmail.com>
Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
> One of the events in the timeline mentions a ZIP (Zork Implementaton
> Program - the game engine) for the DECmate. If anyone has ever seen
> an Infocom title for the DECmate, I'd love to play with it. I'd
> expect that it was for an optional 8-bit coprocessor board, not for
> the primary 12-bit 6100 processor, but I'd like to know for sure.
It was for either the Z80 apu running CP/M making its a terminal/media
thing rather than new version.
I'm not sure just how powerful the 6100 is, but I
doubt it would be too
difficult to port one of the simpler Z-machine engines from Linux or BSD to
whatever the DECmate runs (VMS?)
Decmate II/III uses 6120 (PDP-8 with EMA). There is no *nix for the PDP-8
and OS278 is common. FYI: VMS runs on VAX(32bit) and Alpha(64bit).
If you can fit the game format into a 32Kword 12bit machine it's possible.
Generally speaking there isn't a C compiler for PDP-8 I know of and the
4k paged addressing and very minimalist instruction set would be an
interesting challenge. I've seen Fortan, Focal, Basic and even algol
on an 8 but never C.
There is also the VAXmate, a flavor of a 286 clone.
Allison