9 Jan
2007
9 Jan
'07
5:42 p.m.
Is anyone else using this machine?
I was thinking of getting ADVENT running on it.
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"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
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9 Jan
9 Jan
6:38 p.m.
Richard wrote:
Is anyone else using this machine?
I was thinking of getting ADVENT running on it.
You can do that with a PDP-8. :)
So what was the typical usage for a average user on a
PDP-10 back then? Word processing? Computer Science?
Acounting? Fortran programs?
6:47 p.m.
In article <45A4276F.8000505 at jetnet.ab.ca>,
woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> writes:
Well, it would be a royal PITA for me. The only PDP-8 that I have is
a DECmate I w/out the RX floppy drives.
But this wasn't a question of *what* machines I can use to run ADVENT.
The question was: is anyone else using a login on Paul Allen's
DECsystem-10 or TOAD?
I think the most I ever did with the DEC-10 at UDel was play ADVENT on
it :-).
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"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
I was thinking
of getting ADVENT running on it.
You can do that with a PDP-8. :) 
7:01 p.m.
At 4:38 PM -0700 1/9/07, woodelf wrote:
So what was the typical usage for a average user on a
PDP-10 back then? Word processing? Computer Science?
Acounting? Fortran programs?
Probably the largest PDP-10 userbase would have been Compuserve.
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
10 Jan
10 Jan
12:38 a.m.
So what was the typical usage for a average user on a
PDP-10 back then? Word processing? Computer Science?
Acounting? Fortran programs?
Screwing around.
Other than the educational market, and the relatively small online
timesharing market (Compuserve), the only other big win in PDP-10 land
I can think of was with ADP. I assume they moved off PDP-10s years
ago.
ADP KS10s were modified and painted brown.
--
Will
10 Jan
10 Jan
7:20 a.m.
Richard wrote:
Is anyone else using this machine?
I was thinking of getting ADVENT running on it.
do you just have a tops-20 .sav or sources?
i've searched everywhere for mdl sources but have not not found
any. (but typing that I'm having dejavu all over again. has this topic
come up before?)
now that i think about it the tops-20 version was in fortran, right?
-brad
10:17 a.m.
In article <200701101220.l0ACK16V008678 at mwave.heeltoe.com>,
Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> writes:
Richard wrote:
There was a site that gave the "original" TOPS-10 fortran source for
it.
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"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
Is anyone else using this machine?
I was thinking of getting ADVENT running on it.
do you just have a tops-20 .sav or sources?
11:17 a.m.
On 1/10/07, Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> wrote:
Richard wrote:
ADVENT was always FORTRAN (until it was ported to BASIC in the
8-bit-micro era, and C as well for UNIX, then 16-bit micros). When
you say "MDL", you are probably thinking of Dungeon/Zork. The sources
are not lost (there's a copy on Bob Supnik's pages), neither are
compiled versions for at least TOPS-20 (it's on the Panda distro), but
what _is_ lost, AFAIK, is the MDL compiler and environment. So one
can inspect the source (at least one version, anyway), and one can
play the game (two versions for 36-bit that I've personally run), but
not turn source into a playable game.
-ethan
I was thinking of getting ADVENT running on it.
i've searched everywhere for mdl sources but have not not found
any. (but typing that I'm having dejavu all over again. has this topic
come up before?
now that i think about it the tops-20 version was in fortran, right? 
11:24 a.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
On 1/10/07, Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com>
wrote:
Are there enough specs around that you could write a work-alike?
Peace... Sridhar
Richard wrote:
ADVENT was always FORTRAN (until it was ported to BASIC in the
8-bit-micro era, and C as well for UNIX, then 16-bit micros). When
you say "MDL", you are probably thinking of Dungeon/Zork. The sources
are not lost (there's a copy on Bob Supnik's pages), neither are
compiled versions for at least TOPS-20 (it's on the Panda distro), but
what _is_ lost, AFAIK, is the MDL compiler and environment. So one
can inspect the source (at least one version, anyway), and one can
play the game (two versions for 36-bit that I've personally run), but
not turn source into a playable game. I was thinking of getting ADVENT running on it.
i've searched everywhere for mdl sources but have not not found
any. (but typing that I'm having dejavu all over again. has this topic
come up before?
now that i think about it the tops-20 version was in fortran, right?
3:11 p.m.
On 1/10/07, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote:
Ethan Dicks wrote:
In the most abstract sense, almost certainly. Over a decade ago, I
purchased the relevant MDL-related titles that are now out-of-print
what _is_ lost, AFAIK, is the MDL compiler and
environment...
Are there enough specs around that you could write a work-alike? from MIT Press. MDL itself should be sufficiently
documented as to be
able to implement enough of a subset to compile Zork sources,
but
since I've never had to write a high-level compiler (just written a
few assemblers), the task is larger than I have time or attention-span
to conquer, and from the occasional airing of this topic on Usenet in
rec.arts.int-fiction, the task is larger than most people care to
conquer.
In short - Can? Probably. Will? Maybe.
-ethan
4:42 p.m.
In article <f4eb766f0701101211w4cdeca28y246d0a9b6b145d14 at mail.gmail.com>,
"Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> writes:
On 1/10/07, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at
gmail.com> wrote:
Reading about it made me wonder if it wouldn't be more fruitful to
write a perl script to transliterate the ZIL source for Zork into some
other LISP dialect or another language and work from that instead of
trying to create a whole MDL compiler...
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"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
Ethan Dicks wrote:
[...]
In short - Can? Probably. Will? Maybe. what _is_ lost, AFAIK, is the MDL compiler and
environment...
Are there enough specs around that you could write a work-alike?
11:58 a.m.
"Ethan Dicks" wrote:
When
you say "MDL", you are probably thinking of Dungeon/Zork.
yes, sorry. I ment zork.
The sources
are not lost (there's a copy on Bob Supnik's pages), neither are
compiled versions for at least TOPS-20 (it's on the Panda distro), but
what _is_ lost, AFAIK, is the MDL compiler and environment.
hmm. I think I may have found mdl, for ITS anyway.
-brad
12:33 p.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
ADVENT was always FORTRAN (until it was ported to
BASIC in the
8-bit-micro era, and C as well for UNIX, then 16-bit micros).
It is the PDP8
version of source that was lost. I suspect it still
is on dec tape somewhere.
When
you say "MDL", you are probably thinking of Dungeon/Zork. The sources
are not lost (there's a copy on Bob Supnik's pages), neither are
compiled versions for at least TOPS-20 (it's on the Panda distro), but
what _is_ lost, AFAIK, is the MDL compiler and environment. So one
can inspect the source (at least one version, anyway), and one can
play the game (two versions for 36-bit that I've personally run), but
not turn source into a playable game.
Nothing like closed source languages. :(
I just got ADVENT running on my SBC6120 only to discover the terminal
I am using has a flakey keyboard. Just what do you use for a termial
with the SBC6120?
-ethan
12:45 p.m.
In article <f4eb766f0701100817k18ed72a5hc8d06b5e37cd9aeb at mail.gmail.com>,
"Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> writes:
what _is_ lost, AFAIK, is the MDL compiler and
environment. So one
can inspect the source (at least one version, anyway), and one can
play the game (two versions for 36-bit that I've personally run), but
not turn source into a playable game.
Apparently the ZIL interpreter from Infocom is based on MDL.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
3:25 p.m.
On 1/10/07, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
Apparently the ZIL interpreter from Infocom is based
on MDL.
There are numerous interviews with the original Implementors (founders
of Infocom) and articles in "The New Zork Times"/"Statusline", etc.
to
say that "based on" is in the loosest sense of the word. I can't
recall which of the articles describes all the MDL features they threw
out the window when going from MDL to ZIL, but in effect, I think it
would be more accurate to say that ZIL is patterned after MDL than
based on. Unfortunately, none of the ZIL environment survived the
move from MA to CA when Activision/Mediagenic shut down the Infocom
group in the early 90s(?). I once (prior to the release of "The Lost
Treasures of Infocom") had a line on getting access to some form of
Sun-based server with the remnants of the group's development
environment, but when it came down to discussions of the money
required to purchase a *non-exclusive* license to repackage and
republish the body of Infocom IP (a-la the aforementioned LToI), the
negotiations broke down when their counter-offer to my initial offer
was different by orders of magnitude.
After seeing how cheaply the books were put together for LToI when it
eventually came out, I kinda wished I'd been able to find enough
backing to do it myself, but, to be honest, my background is
development, not publishing, so I can't say that I would have been
able to do a better job without hiking the price well above where they
sold it at ($40-$60, IIRC).
I keep hoping that someday, a copy of ZIL will surface somewhere, but
so far, all I've seen is a tutorial that was given clearance to be
released of some sort of new Imp's ZIL survival guide (that has a
couple of blank/unfinished chapters, unfortunately). What's in there
is most illuminating, but tantalizingly aggravating at the same time.
-ethan
4:51 p.m.
On Wed, 10 Jan 2007, Ethan Dicks wrote:
I keep hoping that someday, a copy of ZIL will surface
somewhere, but
so far, all I've seen is a tutorial that was given clearance to be
released of some sort of new Imp's ZIL survival guide (that has a
couple of blank/unfinished chapters, unfortunately). What's in there
is most illuminating, but tantalizingly aggravating at the same time.
That document was good enough for someone to write a usable ZIL compiler
a couple years ago. The bigger barrier now to writing something large is
that the original libraries are still lost. New ZIL libraries were being
talked about last time I checked.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
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bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca -
brad＠heeltoe.com -
dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
gordon＠gjcp.net -
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legalize＠xmission.com -
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wdonzelli＠gmail.com