RT11 / RSTS-E games

[Paul Anderson]

I have a floppy here somewhere with Adventure and a load of other games i
played on a PDT11/150 I kept at my parents house.

Also an RK05 pack full of dames including  Lunar Lander and Star Treck
which both required a VT11.

I hope to go through them this year yet.

Paul

On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 8:47 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at update.uu.se> wrote:

> On 2015-05-08 03:38, Ethan Dicks wrote:
>
>> On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 8:34 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at update.uu.se>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2015-05-07 20:41, Ethan Dicks wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have 2.52 version of Dungeon
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> That's definitely missing some features (puzzles) from later versions.
>>>> I don't recall what does and doesn't backport from the VMS-era
>>>> versions.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Revision history:
>>>
>>> 16-Jan-03       Backport to RSX-11M-PLUS (V3.2C).
>>> 20-Oct-94       Bug fixes (V3.2B).
>>> 01-Oct-94       Bug fixes (V3.2A).
>>> 01-Feb-94       Portable VMS/UNIX version (V3.1A).
>>> 01-Jan-90       Portable version (V3.0A).
>>> 18-Oct-80       Revised DECUS version (V2.6A).
>>> 18-Jul-80       Transportable data base file (V2.5A).
>>> 28-Feb-80       Compressed text file (V2.4A).
>>> 15-Nov-79       Bug fixes (V2.3A).
>>> 18-Jan-79       Revised DECUS version (V2.2A).
>>> 10-Oct-78       Puzzle Room (V2.1A).
>>> 10-Sep-78       Endgame (V2.0A).
>>> 10-Aug-78       DECUS version (V1.1B).
>>> 14-Jun-78       Public version with parser (V1.1A).
>>> 04-Mar-78       Debugging version (V1.0A).
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> But that "backport" was done by me, and requires an RSX system with split
>>> I/D-space to run...
>>>
>>
>> Nice version history there.
>>
>
> Yeah. All from within the game. Pretty nice. That command should be there
> in most versions of DUNGEON I know of.
>
>  I think in general V2.6 was the last version that was generally available
>>> for PDP-11s.
>>>
>>
>> That seems about right (especially with the 10 year gap, past the
>> point of most daily PDP-11 use).
>>
>
> Indeed.
>
>  If you are looking for games you _can_ play, a couple of years ago at
>>>> VCFe, I hacked one of the RT-11 Z-Machines to run on RSTS/E
>>>>
>>>
>>> I would guess that would be ZEMU?
>>>
>>
>> I think it's actually a decompiled and commented Infocom Z-machine I
>> got from someone on this list.
>>
>
> Cool. I know that Infocom did publish ZORK I for RT-11, but I haven't seen
> it myself.
>
>  I do have it, but on a copy of the daily-driver machine I was using in
>> 2013 or so.  I have to go find it on an archive disk.
>>
>
> Interesting. Might be fun to check out if I ever have time...
>
>  Do you have the RSTS/E fixes around. I
>>> have been hoping for ages that someone would just try and get it running
>>> under RSTS/E, since then I could incorporate those fixes into the
>>> distribution as well.
>>>
>>
>> If ZEMU compiles for RT-11 (not just RSX-11), then the fix, if it
>> needs one, for RSTS/E would be similar and minor (there's an extra
>> little twiddle you have to do when allocating memory under the RT-11
>> emulation environment that is not required on real RT-11).
>>
>
> ZEMU works just fine on both RSX and RT-11. I wrote the thing with
> portability in mind. All OS-dependent code is in just one file, and Megan
> Gentry did the RT-11 port.
> An RSTS/E port should be pretty straight forward. You could possibly even
> use most of the RT-11 code straight up. The RSX code would probably be
> harder.
>
>  Afraid I can't help much, though. All stuff I got is for RSX.
>>>
>>
>> In 1986-1987, I was doing a bunch of RT-11 development for a custom
>> product.  I was on the PDP-11 all day every day, and my gaming
>> alternatives were a C-64 (nice, but getting a bit old at that time)
>> and an Amiga with single floppy and 512MB of RAM (fixed up to 2MB and
>> 20MB disk a year later), so I collected RT-11 games (and OS/8 games,
>> but that's for another thread).
>>
>
> Well, I know that there are a bunch of games on DECUS distributions, so I
> would suggest checking those out.
>
> Also, a bunch of DECUS programs were source in FORTRAN or BASIC, and
> should really compile just fine on any OS.
>
> The most fun games for RSX, however, are multiplayer things, and those
> would be much harder to port... But if anyone is interested, they can
> certainly check under MIM::SYS$GAMES: on HECnet.
>
>
>         Johnny
>
> --
> Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
>                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
> email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
> pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
>