Bring Zork back home

[larsbrinkhoff]

Rich Alderson says he has the Muddle interpreter/compiler? for TOPS-20. Binary only. It could be disassembled and ported back to ITS.

Photo credit: Tor Lillqvist (@tml1024), 1980.
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tml/370427667/

[ethandicks]

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 5:31 AM Lars Brinkhoff notifications@github.com wrote:

MIDAS source for ZAP, ZIL assembler: https://github.com/historicalsource/minizork-1982/blob/65673bb4345f31fc3cb8f8aba9e6822fff1f99a6/zap.mid

I would be interested to learn where those would compile and run.

Additionally, I have recently learned that I have a handful of *.save files with "interesting" names... in particular, ZILCH.SAVE and OZILCH.SAVE.

In my experience, these would be digestible to a MDL runtime. How can I tell what version? I have accounts on real machines running TOPS-20 and I have done emulation (via xkleten and the Panda distribution).

My experience with 36-bit machines has been as a user, not as a programmer, so I know I have much to learn. I mostly work in C and 8/12/16/32-bit assembler but I could read PDP-10 assembler with a dictionary and a glossary.

-ethan

[larsbrinkhoff]

@ethandicks,

ZAP.MID is for assembling with MIDAS on a TOPS-20 machine. I'm working on porting it to ITS.

I don't know how to guess the MDL version for your SAVE files. But I think there's a good chance it would be 104 or 105, so maybe just try <RESTORE "ZILCH.SAVE"> or something.

@atsampson got MDL built from sources last year, but it's version 56/106. (The TOPS-20 version is >100 and the corresponding ITS version is 50 less.) We don't know to which extent 106 is compatible with 105.

[taradinoc]

Check the initial bytes of that save file - if it says MIM, you probably need to find a working copy of MIM.

[atsampson]

Regarding MIM, we have A/UX binaries for it here, and we have TOPS-20 and VAX source here. I've been wondering whether it'd be possible to bring the A/UX binaries up in the Shoebill A/UX emulator, and use them to re-bootstrap the TOPS-20 and VAX versions.

There is some corruption in the text files in those repositories, though, so it's possible that the binaries may also be mangled...

[larsbrinkhoff]

What kind of corruption? Do you have any examples?

This may be why @ams has been having problems with microcode files. In my analysis, the extracted file seemed to have one octet inserted or missing.

[atsampson]

The obvious one is doc.mss. The corrupted parts seem to be bit errors rather than insertions/deletions.

[ams]

I do not think my issues are with corruption, they are to very narrow in scope and only affect specific files in a very specific manner.

What kind of corruption? Do you have any examples?

This may be why @ams has been having problems with microcode files. In my analysis, the extracted file seemed to have one octet inserted or missing.

[larsbrinkhoff]

A DM tape has surfaced, and while it doesn't have too much on it (a bunch of SYS.xx.yy memos though!), there is a good set of .TAPE directories. From this we can make backup file listings. I get almost 400k rows in the listings, and there are timestamps going back to 1971.

Zork makes a first appearance in June 1975, as MADMAN; ZORK LOG. I see CLR; ZORK SAVE in October.

@taa01776's History of Zork says:

In early 1977, Adventure swept the ARPAnet. [...] By late May, Adventure had been solved, and various DM'ers were looking for ways to have fun. [...] Although Zork in June 1977 was infinitely more primitive than, say, Zork I [...]

So maybe the 1975 Zork files are not the Zork game, but something else. I see files called ADVENT from 1975, but still unclear if that's the Adventure game. First SYS2; TS ADVENT is from June 1977 which is in line with Anderson's article. This is also when MARC; TS ZORK is first seen.

I also see MADMAN; MADADV SAVE files going back to 1975.

First appearance of the CFS directory is in July 1977.

So this is a bit inconclusive, but I'd say it looks like the 1975 files refers to "zork" in some other sense, not the game.

[taa01776]

Correct. Zork was not a word that was invented for the game; it was used (especially by Marc, IIRC) to name the hack du jour. 1975 version could easily be a trivia game that Marc and others worked on. (Dave was always top of the leaderboard, of course.)

I may be mistaken, but I think the first full solution of Adventure on DM was in 1977—Bruce Daniels, with me and probably others kibitzing, found the last stinking lousy point by reverse-engineering how the game came up with the score, and how it identified objects and rooms (offsets into FORTRAN arrays, obviously). There were address breaks as well as normal breakpoints involved.

Not sure what the 1975 ADVENT would’ve been. -ta

From: Lars Brinkhoff notifications@github.com Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2019 8:54 AM To: PDP-10/its its@noreply.github.com Cc: Anderson, Timothy A. taa@stresearch.com; Mention mention@noreply.github.com Subject: Re: [PDP-10/its] Bring Zork back home (#12)

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A DM tape has surfaced, and while it doesn't have too much on it (a bunch of SYS.xx.yy memos though!), there is a good set of .TAPE directories. From this we can make backup file listings. I get almost 400k rows in the listings, and there are timestamps going back to 1971.

Zork makes a first appearance in June 1975, as MADMAN; ZORK LOG. I see CLR; ZORK SAVE in October.

@taa01776https://github.com/taa01776's History of Zork says:

In early 1977, Adventure swept the ARPAnet. [...] By late May, Adventure had been solved, and various DM'ers were looking for ways to have fun. [...] Although Zork in June 1977 was infinitely more primitive than, say, Zork I [...]

So maybe the 1975 Zork files are not the Zork game, but something else. I see files called ADVENT from 1975, but still unclear if that's the Adventure game. First SYS2; TS ADVENT is from June 1977 which is in line with Anderson's article. This is also when MARC; TS ZORK is first seen.

I also see MADMAN; MADADV SAVE files going back to 1975.

First appearance of the CFS directory is in July 1977.

So this is a bit inconclusive, but I'd say it looks like the 1975 files refers to "zork" in some other sense, not the game.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/12?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAM5GXIXKXXTHED77IKQSY3QTVKBBA5CNFSM4CXAONF2YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOEEB452I#issuecomment-553897705, or unsubscribehttps://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAM5GXLQ2WM65QQWOOL2QV3QTVKBBANCNFSM4CXAONFQ.

[larsbrinkhoff]

Update: The January 1978 binary version of Zork is now included and runs on Muddle 54, thanks to @atsampson: #1495

Video demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdAIbbVkwhQ

[larsbrinkhoff]

An earlier Zork map. Sources: https://eblong.com/infocom/maps/Zork-Map-Lebling-1978.jpeg
http://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/02/a-treasury-of-zork-maps.html
https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/08/22/149560/the-enduring-legacy-of-zork/

[larsbrinkhoff]

I vectorized the ZORK logotype.