Printing Infocom Transcripts from 8-bitters (was Re: KIM Manual / Selectric)

--- technoid(a)cheta.net wrote:> Back in the olden days of microcomputers a printer of any type cost a> bundle...Oh, yeah.> ...I think the most interesting one was a board> with a bank of solenoids mounted on it which faced the keyboard of the> typewriter.Because my mother had the typewriter, I wanted that device so bad. I justcouldn't afford it as a teenager.> Neither the WE teletype nor the EP22 would allow me to print my Hitchhiker's> Guide or Zork sessions as these games were 'boot' games with thier own dos.> Since the Atari 8-bit did not have a resident Serial printer handler, I could> not print from an Infocom game.By the time I could afford a printer, I had a Commodore-64 to drive it. Theprinter was an ancient Centronics that had two print heads - one for columns1 through 80 and another for 81 through 132. It had a genuine Centronicsinterface, of course. I built a cable for the user port and wrote a handlerthat fit in the cassette buffer and wedged in the OS routine for CHROUT. Istill have some Infocom transcripts from that printer as well as some ScottAdams disassembly from a game ripper I wrote in BASIC.I used to customize my Infocom environment in several ways before playingthe older games - I would load the PET font (captured by moving the characterROM to a regular expansion socket and typing the save command blind into TIM,the PET's ROM-based machine language monitor), change the color to green onblack and load my parallel printer driver before starting a session.I was such an Infocom afficianado that I eventually disassembled the oldest(and simplest) version of the C-64 ZIP (Zork Implementation Program, thegame engine) and have recompiled it to work on the VIC-20 (with enough RAM)and the BASIC 2.0 PET (I haven't gone back to find which zero-page locationsare getting stomped by the CHROUT routine in the kernal in BASIC 4.0).As an avid fan, it was a blast beta-testing "Return To Zork". It wasn't agreat game, but the coolest part was watching my bug reports turn intodetectable improvements in the game. I also pitched Infocom about portingRtZ to the Amiga, but it never happened. I got the underlying engine workingas a demonstration (text only, no graphics), but the project was cancelled dueto lack of expected financial reward.Needless to say, I've spent many an hour playing and writing adventures. Printing... oh, yeah... this post started off about printing... yeah,that, too. :-)-ethan Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com The original webpage address is still going away. The permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/ See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger.