PDP-11 Zork Manual: Save $2,348.31

[Ethan Dicks]

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 4:16 AM, Dan Gahlinger <dgahling at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is awesome, so many memories of that game.

So true.

> The PDF worked fine here.

It sounds like a problem with ancient PDF readers.  I'm using an
up-to-date one and had no issues.

> I'm curious if anyone on the list has a copy of the Zork source code circa 1976?
> If nothing exists from that period, I have a copy from Vax/Vms of that era (in fortran),
> but I only have the printout, the dtext files did not survive

I may have ancient FORTRAN source, but Bob Supnik himself posted (on
trailingedge) the real MDL sources he wrote the FORTRAN version from
(his files are identical to the ones I was sent by one of the original
Implementors in 1992, the ones I wrote ZDungeon in Inform 6 from).

> One of the rumors about the version I have is that it was supposedly able to tell you
> exactly where errors were in the code (if you mis-entered it), by line and segment.

Hmm... I am unfamiliar with that "feature".

> I have printouts of various code from 1976,
> including Zork, Adventure, Trek5, Trek7, Castle, and Rogue.
>
> OCR'ing this stuff is a massive nightmare, as DEC line printer fonts are horrible.
> esp "0" vs "O", and I vs 1 vs l, even reading my eye is tough...
>
> Plus, some of it being pre fortran-77 and the vms weirdness of the time makes it next to impossible to transcode...

I think it would be strange for 1976-era FORTRAN to have VMSisms since
that predates the 11/780, but I'm sure there could be plenty of
DECisms from FORTRAN on RSTS/E or RSX-11.

-ethan