Paul Allen's DECsystem-10

[Ethan Dicks]

On 1/10/07, Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> wrote:
>
> Richard wrote:
> >I was thinking of getting ADVENT running on it.
>
> i've searched everywhere for mdl sources but have not not found
> any. (but typing that I'm having dejavu all over again.  has this topic
> come up before?
>
> now that i think about it the tops-20 version was in fortran, right?

ADVENT was always FORTRAN (until it was ported to BASIC in the
8-bit-micro era, and C as well for UNIX, then 16-bit micros).  When
you say "MDL", you are probably thinking of Dungeon/Zork.  The sources
are not lost (there's a copy on Bob Supnik's pages), neither are
compiled versions for at least TOPS-20 (it's on the Panda distro), but
what _is_ lost, AFAIK, is the MDL compiler and environment.  So one
can inspect the source (at least one version, anyway), and one can
play the game (two versions for 36-bit that I've personally run), but
not turn source into a playable game.

-ethan