Category Archives: games

Zork for the PDP-11 / RT-11 recreated

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I know this is a weird one, but I’ve always wanted to run Infocom games from ever since I found out it was a thing.

The cover of the RT-11 Zork that sold on ebay for $2,348.31

I know you maybe thinking of the FORTRAN port of the full Zork game, which does run on the same system. But this is NOT the FORTRAN reverse engineered game, rather it’s a port of the Z-Machine to the RT-11 / PDP-11.

Also this is NOT a 3rd party reverse engineering effort, it is the official Infocom Z-Machine source.

;       Proprietary documentation of:
;
;               Infocom, Inc.
;               55 Wheeler St.
;               Cambridge, MA 02138
;
;       Copyright (C) 1982, 1983 Infocom, Inc.  All rights reserved.

Yes it’s the real deal!

Ok so what or where to do this?! First you need SIMH or any other good PDP-11 emulator, a copy of RT-11, and of course the source to the interpreter oddly enough named PDP11.ZIP. Just keep in mind that this is NOT a pk-zip file, it’s a text file. It’s Macro-11 assembler source.

First you need a very simple config/type in to the SIMH PDP-11 emulator:

attach rk0 rtv4_rk.dsk
attach ptr pdp11.zip
boot rk

All being well you should boot into RT-11.

Now we copy the source into the machine through the paper tape reader. Just type in ‘COPY PC: ZIP.MAC’

.COPY PC: ZIP.MAC
 Files copied:
PC:            to DK:ZIP.MAC

.

This will create a .mac or macro assembler source file. The extension matters as it will tell the compiler what file it is and what to do. But luckily this is a single file, and assembles quite easily. As a tip to Unix folk, I found that making the assembly source in MS-DOS CR/LF made life easier.

Compiling & linking is very straightforward

.COMPILE ZIP.MAC
ERRORS DETECTED:  0

.LINK ZIP.OBJ

.

Now we need to import a game file. I usually test with Planetfall, so I grabbed the data file, and placed it into the working directory and then attached it to the emulator

Simulation stopped, PC: 152644 (BR 152622)
sim> att ptr planetfa
sim> c


.COPY PC: PLANET.IML
 Files copied:
PC:            to DK:PLANET.IML

.

Notice the filenames are short, very 8.3 for some strange coincidence! Also I named it planet.iml, as that is what the interpreter is expecting. Now we can just run the zip and point it to the game data file!

.RUN ZIP
Line width (default is 80, end with LF for status line):
File name (current default is DK:$GAME$.IML) *dk:planet.iml
PLANETFALL
Infocom interactive fiction - a science fiction story
Copyright (c) 1983 by Infocom, Inc. All rights reserved.
PLANETFALL is a trademark of Infocom, Inc.
Release 37 / Serial number 851003

And there we go! We are now running Planetfall on our simulated PDP-11!

There is quite a few great 80’s systems in the github repository, I have no doubt the rest can be built, but I thought I’d tackle a system that was another bigfoot, a thing of pure legend!

Knights of the Old Republic PowerPC

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I just scored a G5 iMac for £20 with a damaged panel. It doesn’t bother me at all as I’m not going to use it for anything serious, I’m just wanting something mainstream.

I did want one thing which was KOTOR.

So I looked up eBay, and yeah turns out it’s a collectors thing?

£147!! No way!

I saw this for far less, the Star Wars Mac Pack!

vBut at the flip side had this ominous warning….

Intel only

I thought I’d just try the disc anyway.. nothing to lose?

Universal!?

and yeah, not only is KOTOR is PPC, but yes it does run on OS X 10.4!

PPP KOTOR

granted it’s on steam, gog and of course available for pretty much anything modern. And sure yeah, it was originally PC/Xbox, but for some odd reason I’m feeling nostalgic for that last gen PPC.

Stadia controllers can be re-flashed to generic PC controllers

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Stadia controller

So I saw this controller for sale for 20. I figured that there ought to be a way to hack it to do something useful so it may be fun. Turns out all it needs is a re-flash of new firmware and it’ll become a generic controller.

All you need to do is peer it to your computer, go to https://stadia.google.com/controller and follow the prompts.

You might be slightly scared that the browser can talk directly to bluetooth devices, including the unlock, and re-programming the controller.

And yeah after that it’s all unlocked and good to go!

Not sure if it matters all that much, but for anyone wanting either a controller on the cheap, or if you bought into Stadia when it was a thing (did anyone remember other than the announcement and the expected cancellation?).

I guess it’s nice that google is providing an unlock service but I’m sure that won’t be around forever, so yeah. yay.

Today is Starfield day!

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And there is a map of all the locales and when the launch. I was busy working and didn’t notice that Hong Kong had already launched.

many geo zones!

Thankfully I did get a payment voucher which fully covered the super fancy edition. Sadly there was no option for GPU’s so I’m going to try this with an OG 6GB GTX Titan.

It was a bit weird to figure out if I could run the game or not but I did get a pop up that today was the day so I guess so.

0% verified

I’ll have no choice but to update as it goes, so nothing yet to report.

I’m just hoping it’s not the hollow world experience of Fallout 76.

After all that downloading, turns out it doesn’t like my video card at all.

So yeah GTX 1070ti minimum. wow.

So I abused a work machine that ironically has a decent mobile GPU. swapped some storage and booted into the game, played a few hours.. And yeah

Old tyme Bethesda quality

When |I could, I took a detour to Earth’s moon, and went out for a walk. Naturally there was a base less then half a click away, and naturally it had 30 insurgents automatically hostile. What a vast but populated world. And then the NPC following me around suddenly took off her space suit, and broke the whole thing. I wanted to maybe get an ARC but apparente it doesn’t run at all on ARC. Seems kinda fishy to me tho. NVIDIA released a new driver like today for the special launch. I don’t know if there will be any fallout.

SimCity for Unix Liberated

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(This is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

In early 90s DUX Software ported SimCity classic UNIX. They provided downloadable demo versions for SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, SGI IRIX, OSF/1, Digital Unix, OpenDesktop, UnixWare, Linux and BSD.

SimCity SGI IRIX screenshot from DUX website

In the winter break wave of nostalgia I wanted to play SimCity on my vintage HPUX workstation. Unfortunately the 5 minute demo just wouldn’t cut it. Back in 1993 you could simply purchase a license key and unlock the demo to a full version. However even if I could find an old license code, these keys were “Host ID” locked, so you could not easily use it on a different machine anyway.

In 2008 SimCity Classic has been open sourced under a new name Micropolis for the OLPC project. This was truly epic endeavor, many thanks to everyone involved. Unfortunately for vintage computer enthusiasts, the source code been updated to compile on a modern Linux, before it was released to the public. It will no longer build on any old Unix system. Typically, when a developer decides to free up their obsolete version, they just toss out some licenses codes. Sadly this time no one ever bothered.

The only option left was to bypass the license checking code. Fortunately, modern binary analysis tools make patching old apps relatively straightforward. In just minutes I was able to get the game started in a full multiplayer mode. A few hours later I got it patched on all the vintage Unix platforms!

SimCity on Solaris 7 (also works on 8 and 9)
SimCity on HP-UX 9 (doesn’t work on 10 or 11 due to TCL/TK issues)
SimCity on OSF/1 aka Digital Unix aka Tru64
SimCity on IRIX 5.3 on MAME (doesn’t work on never IRIX due to COFF binary)
SimCity on SunOS 4.1.4 on QEMU
SimCity on SCO OpenServer / OpenDesktop (ODT)

UPDATE: patched IRIX as well! Special thanks to Mr^Burns for providing a preinstalled IRIX 5.3 MAME image!

UPDATE: patched SunOS version as well. Special thanks to Daghdha for preinstalled SunOS 4.1.4 QEMU image!

UPDATE: patched SCO Unix/ODT version as well.

You can download the demo versions and patches here. Happy gaming on your vintage Unix Workstation!

If you just want to try the game without bothering with an ancient unix, you can simply sudo apt install micropolis && micropolis on a modern Linux – it’s identical except for multiplayer

GNU Chess ’87

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I am not much of a chess player. That said one thing that has annoyed me to no end is GNU Chess 1.2. Over on bitsavers is this fun directory:

And despite being a treasure trove of ancient GNU software, I have never been able to get GNU Chess to do much of anything. At best it’ll give the Chess prompt, and then it’ll either crash (good!) or worst case it just exits silently with no reason given.

I have put only minimal effort into debugging it, and really got nowhere. I don’t know why this is such a tough beast to deal with, or why I even care. As I mentioned above, I’m not much of a chess player.

But for some reason this time around I thought I’d try the earliest release quality Visual C++ to build it. I wasn’t expecting much, however for some reason this ancient version seems to run.

I had to enable a few things such as the RANDOM & HASH to make it look like it wants to play. I ended up having to make some changes after a draw or victory as the ‘self playing mode’would keep going. Not sure what’s going on there, and I added a line at the end of the logic loop to always print the board, so at least you can see what is going on if you have it playing itself.

With that said this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen:

  White Black Depth  Nodes  Score    Cpu     Rate
1. e2e4 e7e5      4   5793      0   0.00      1
2. d2d4 b8c6      4      0      0   0.00      0
3. d4e5 c6e5      4  17966      0   0.00      1
4. g1f3 b7b6      4      0      0   0.00      0
5. f3e5 f8c5      4 487931   -325   0.00      1
6. d1d5 c5b4      4 2079943   -425   1.00      2079943
7. e1d1 a7a6      4      0    775   0.00      0
8. d5f7           4 161840   4525   0.00      1
Averages:  4.00 ply, 550695 nodes,  0.20 cpu, 2753473 nodes/sec

Given I don’t have any good rusage emulation going on (I know its in MinGW at some point, and I probably can find it, and get it running on MSVC but I don’t see that as important) an 8 move victory seems pretty… unlikely?

Maybe it’s a good test of other C compilers to see if they produce anything. Or maybe it’s all a red herring? I haven’t tested with much but GCC 1.40 can’t even run it on x86. Watcom 10 can build, but it crashes during a self game.

It’s one of those mysteries, that I’m sure there is some fundamental lesson, but I’m not sure what it is.

Other than it’s a long way down, standing on the shoulders of giants.

I put the source & exe over on github. Not that I expect any takers.

VOGONS.org turns 20 years old today!

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Stiletto had dropped on by to share this amazing milestone!

Today is the 20th anniversary of http://VOGONS.org. I was there helping to brainstorm it into existence in June 2000 at @bravenet on vladr’s VDMSound forums before @zetafleet hosted it, I registered for it on July 1st, and I helped give it its name and “theme”!

Follow the twitter thread here!

For the longest time VOGONS was the place to get information about VDMsound the sound blaster emulator for NTVDM, allowing a far more rich gaming experience on NT, DOSBox, the ubiquitous PC/MS-DOS emulator that is simply everywhere, and of course where I was ‘discovered’ via ‘Quake1 with WATTCP built with DJGPP on DOSBox‘ some 10+ years ago!

So happy 20th to VOGONS!