There is an alternative. Before Infocom was even formed, a DEC Field
Engineer person (I think fondly known as "The Translator") translated the
original MDL (pronounced "muddle") (which predates ZIL) into FORTRAN. The
game was known as "Dungeon" at that time. (It was known as Zork before
that and after that).
See
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/dungeon.html for a good history.
In fact, you can take the data files that are in the FORTRAN version on
that site, combine them (being careful to set up DTEXT.DAT as a fixed
length 80 byte record file) with the VAX port available from
http://www.montagar.com/freeware/DUNGEON/ (the data files on the Montagar
site are, unfortunately, currently corrupted) and have a running port of
Dungeon on a VAX. I did this just this past weekend.
The version that was originally ported to the PDP-11 in FORTRAN was
submitted to DECUS. I played it under RSX-11 on a PDP-11/23 at one point,
and have a copy on an RSX-11 pack that, last I tried it a few years ago,
still worked. (Requests will currently be sent off to /dev/null -- too
busy. 8-) ).
Unfortunately, the DECUS archive at
http://www.decus.org/software/index.shtml does not seem to be currently
available.
Playing one of these older versions would suit the vintage of your PDP-11
better, IMHO, than running one of the later Infocom ZIL version (even
though those might be closer to the original source).
Jay Jaeger
At 05:58 PM 6/20/00 +0000, Eric Smith wrote
>In the early-to-mid 1980s, Infocom used to offer a bunch of their games
>for the PDP-11. Naturally I didn't get my first -11 until after that.
>If anyone has a copy of Zork (or the other games) for the -11, I'd
>certainly love to get a copy.
>
>The -11 processor would do a good job of implementing the Z-machine.
---
Jay R. Jaeger The Computer Collection
cube1_at_home.com visit
http://members.home.net/thecomputercollection
Received on Wed Jun 21 2000 - 19:07:08 BST