I apparently have Spacewar for Unix?

[Ed C.]

Sun

On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 8:57 PM Tomasz Rola via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 09:51:02AM -0500, Daniel Seagraves via cctalk
> wrote:
> > While dumping lispm tapes, I found one with a label saying "Read it
> > into DRAL" (may be "DRAC"?) "and sent a message to cap's bboard
> > saying where it can be found. -Bob”. There was another paper label
> > that had fallen off. What I think is the label in question was later
> > found in the bottom of the box, a strip of masking tape saying
> > “SPACEWAR FOR VAX (Unix?)”. The contents are a 136KB tar archive
> > containing source to a program called “orbit”, all files are dated
> > August 22nd, 1983.
> >
>
> I unpacked it. The beginning of orbit.man says:
>
> --------------------
> .SH NAME
> orbit \- Spacewar on the Sun
> .SH SYNOPSIS
> .B
> orbit <players>
> .PP
> .B
> orbit <ship1name> ... [-O <optionfile>]
> .SH DESCRIPTION
> The classic game of interplanetary death and destruction.
> Mostly written in C; an assembler package does fast single-precision
> floating-point for orbital calculations and collision detection.
> .PP
> Most of the game's basic parameters are changeable;
> parameter sets can be saved and reloaded from option files.
> If the file .orbitrc exists in your
> --------------------
>
> and the fp.s file looks to me like a Motorola assembler, but I may be
> wrong. In main.c there are references to something like graphics
> routines making use of framebuffer. The structure of filesystem
> mentioned in Makefile hints towards Unix-like system.
>
> I would say, after very quick looking, it is rather for SunOS, not for
> anything DEC-made.
>
> I wonder if others may come to different conclusions?
>
> --
> Regards,
> Tomasz Rola
>
> --
> ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
> ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
> ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
> **                                                                 **
> ** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **
>