RT11 / RSTS-E games

[Ethan Dicks]

On Sun, May 10, 2015 at 6:15 AM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at update.uu.se> wrote:
> On 2015-05-09 20:39, Kirk B Davis wrote:
>>
>> While not DEC specific don't forget about 101 Basic computer games:
>>
>> https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_decBooks10Mar75_26006648
>
> Right.
> And maybe not DEC-specific, but definitely DEC-related as the book was
> originally published by DEC, and Dave Ahl was working at DEC when he wrote
> it, and I think BASIC+ was the dialect used.

There are numerous mentions in that edition of different systems,
RSTS/E, EduSystem 15, 20, 30, 35, 50, and the odd DECsystem-10.  One
example, the header for the run for "AMAZIN" says "EDUSYSTEM 30".

I learned a lot about system differences and porting to different
environments when I had a copy of the DEC edition of this book in 1978
and only a 4K Commodore PET at the main library to work on.  My first
attempt at typing in a program failed dismally because I didn't yet
know that Microsoft BASIC preferred ":" as a statement separator and
DEC BASIC used "\" (then there was RANDOMIZE and several other
dialectical differences, and beyond that, trying to fit 72-column
outputs on a 40 column machine).

Very educational once I got past the initial stumbles.  I typed in a
wad of programs from that book.

-ethan