A recent addition to Bitsavers <https://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/history/> is a bunch of transcripts of interviews with various former DEC personnel.
I?ve just been reading the Bob Supnik one. Why did I pick that?
because his is a name I remember as the mastermind behind the
well-known SIMH series of software emulators of
historically-significant computer systems.
On 2026-03-09, Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
A recent addition to Bitsavers <https://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/history/> is a bunch of transcripts of interviews with various former DEC personnel.
I?ve just been reading the Bob Supnik one. Why did I pick that?
because his is a name I remember as the mastermind behind the
well-known SIMH series of software emulators of
historically-significant computer systems.
The first thing I think of when I hear Bob Supnik's name
is Adventure (which morphed into Zork). I finally got my
hands on the FORTRAH source code and ported it to run on
the mainframe I was working on at the time (Univac 90/30).
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey
The first thing I think of when I hear Bob Supnik's name is Adventure (which morphed into Zork). I finally got my hands on the FORTRAH source code and ported it to run on the mainframe I was working on at the time (Univac 90/30).
On Mon, 09 Mar 2026 02:47:50 GMT
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-09, Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
A recent addition to Bitsavers
<https://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/history/> is a bunch of
transcripts of interviews with various former DEC personnel.
I?ve just been reading the Bob Supnik one. Why did I pick that?
because his is a name I remember as the mastermind behind the
well-known SIMH series of software emulators of
historically-significant computer systems.
The first thing I think of when I hear Bob Supnik's name
is Adventure (which morphed into Zork). I finally got my
hands on the FORTRAH source code and ported it to run on
the mainframe I was working on at the time (Univac 90/30).
Zork <> Colossal Cave
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
The first thing I think of when I hear Bob Supnik's name is Adventure (which >> morphed into Zork). I finally got my hands on the FORTRAH source code and >> ported it to run on the mainframe I was working on at the time (Univac
90/30).
Adevnture is the Colossal Cave program (original by Will Crowther, fantasy elements by Don woods). It was always in FORTRAN.
ZORK is the MIT Dynamic Modeling reaction to Adventure, written in a Lisp dialect called MDL ("Modeling Dynamics Language").
Dungeon is what Bob called *his* port of ZORK to Fortran.
See which way the morphing went?
Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> wrote:
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
The first thing I think of when I hear Bob Supnik's name is Adventure (which
morphed into Zork). I finally got my hands on the FORTRAH source code and >>> ported it to run on the mainframe I was working on at the time (Univac
90/30).
Adevnture is the Colossal Cave program (original by Will Crowther, fantasy >> elements by Don woods). It was always in FORTRAN.
ZORK is the MIT Dynamic Modeling reaction to Adventure, written in a Lisp
dialect called MDL ("Modeling Dynamics Language").
Dungeon is what Bob called *his* port of ZORK to Fortran.
See which way the morphing went?
Thanks for the clarification, Rich.
I still have my username/password for Paul Allen's xkleten, where I would
run the original version. Thanks for your work in making that available to
us - too bad it's gone.
I spent lots of hours on Dungeon under RSX-11M, some in the twisty
little passages all alike.
I still have my username/password for Paul Allen's xkleten, where I would
run the original version. Thanks for your work in making that available to
us - too bad it's gone.
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