Re: [Simh] Simulating Fortran

[Clem cole]

Will

Let’s take this offline.  I think I can talk you through this.  Clem

Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. 

> On Dec 29, 2018, at 6:51 PM, Will Senn  wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I’m looking for a good lead on two things - 1. A fortran environment for 
> learning the language as it existed in the  research unix v6/v7 era (roughly 
> late ‘70’s). 2. A good text/book to guide the way toward building and running 
> fortran programs successfully.
> 
> I’m a little lost in the sea of possibilities- v6’s fortran however good that 
> is... v7’s, rt-11’s, etc.  etc. 
> 
> My bonus question is, was there a point of time in the late 70’s where a 
> stable situation existed and most folks used system X with FXX? If so what 
> system with which dialect, and is it accessible as a simh environment?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Will
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
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[Simh] Simulating Fortran

[Will Senn]

Hi all,

I’m looking for a good lead on two things - 1. A fortran environment for 
learning the language as it existed in the  research unix v6/v7 era (roughly 
late ‘70’s). 2. A good text/book to guide the way toward building and running 
fortran programs successfully.

I’m a little lost in the sea of possibilities- v6’s fortran however good that 
is... v7’s, rt-11’s, etc. http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh

Re: [Simh] Packaging systems and simh (Was: Systems Engineering Labs (SEL) simh simulator available)

[David Brownlee]

On Thu, 27 Dec 2018 at 22:46, Clem Cole  wrote:

>
> On Wed, Dec 26, 2018 at 7:03 PM David Brownlee  wrote:
>
>> Well, Joyent also makes binary pkgsrc packages for SmartOS, macOS, and
>> CentOS/REL :) https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/
>>
>
> xkcd on standards   sigh.
>
> Note: I have lived this issue at Intel for +10 years BTW [we make a very
> slick set of development tools that are compatible across different
> OS's]
>

(Apologies for continuing the thread another level - I've changed the
Subject to make it easier for people to just skip)

So I will step on top of Soap Box 
>
> As I often have to remind some of our more our engineers at work *installs,
> particularly binary installs, must be socially compliant with the OS* - *i.e.
> what the customer expects.  This is the 'least astonishment principle.'*
>
> That means custom installers that are common for the tool, but different
> from the native OS are a no-no if you really want someone to use the tool
> as a binary. [And that's expensive and hard to do well BTW].
>
> Yup, custom installers makes it easier for >>you<< but not for the person
> doing the installs.   So if you make the choice to support an OS,
> particularly as a binary, then the install needs to be for that OS --- for
> winders its a different  installer than from DOS which is different than VMS.
>   For VMS its the DEC Installer.  For, the UNIX family Solaris is different
> from the loathsome DEC setld(8) of Ultrix and Tru64, which is different
> from IBM AIX which is different from HP-UX, etc  Linux gets really
> strange on the binary front.   The good news is the commerical folks using
> Linux it is primarily rpm and there are tools the convert from tools that
> convert from rpm to yum/getapt etc., but generally Linux folks generally
> do not want a binary installer ;-)  But there are N different Linux package
> managers and each one is 'better' than the other?   If you have a binary
> distribution for your tool, which do you use?
>

Joyent's pkgsrc *is* the native OS installer for SmartOS, it also targets
RHEL as there are supported versions where the native packages are ancient
(Python 2.4 anyone) and any attempt to wholesale use current versions of
native packages usually results in a nightmare of tdark twisty passages,
none of which work. As for MacOS, well for unix tools the standard path is
a choice of non native package systems (or build your own).

Also quite a few people just use it as a framework to build and install
from source, managing their dependencies, letting them know when a useful
(FSVO useful) upgrade is available, etc.

In short - pkgsrc is the native package system on a couple of OSs, and a
generally useful tool on some others where the native system is deficient
in quality and/or quantity of packages, but for where a system has a rich
set of existing recent packages I definitely agree most people should Just
Use Them, (bar a few outliers like HPC folks who need to be able to keep
multiple entire trees around concurrently for reproducing earlier results)

That said 
>
> simh is a wonderful tool and the fruits of the labor of many people.  But
> I see it as primarily a github (source) release.   When Mark graceously
> does make a binary, he seems to follow least astonishment.   But since he
> has made the sources available and some distro's have picked it up and
> created binaries of their own, many have done a poor job of following up
> with the source distribution.   Which of course, fails the least
> astonishment principle also (because it's easier for the distro maintainers
> of course).  They can claim they have 'simh' but because they made it
> eaiser for themselves, they are in effect an older (unmaintained) 'fork' or
> the tree.
>
> And this is the of course is a flaw in FOSS.   The economics don't
> follow.   Ecomonically, you want to make it as easy on the builder of the
> tool if your 'product' is the sources.  Which is what Mark does (an
> excellent job IMO as its pretty impressive the number of OS's that can
> build it).
>
> But if you take the sources and package it and create an installer ...
> well Mark and Bob should speak for themselves  but I think that is you
> own problem; not simh's
>

Sorry, I'm... not entirely sure what problem I'm supposed to have? (not
trying to be pissy - I'm genuinely a little confused)

simh is in pkgsrc, which covers a subset of OS platforms, and a few people
keep it relatively up to date. This may well have resulted in some
additional people trying it who wouldn't have otherwise used it (plus made
it easier for people like me who *could* manage rebuilding every so often
and tracking SDL/pcre/png/pcap/dejavu-ttf/etc dependencies but prefers to
spend those cycles elsewhere).

(Also simh is used to run automated OS regression tests for some platforms,
which while its far from perfect in determining that the code works
perfectly on real hardware, is still a useful check, and defini

Re: [Simh] Quest from 1979 on RSTS/E V06C-03 in Simh (Brett Bump)

[Paul Koning]

> On Dec 29, 2018, at 3:29 PM, Robert G. Schaffrath  
> wrote:
> 
> > Or you could grab the pre-genned V6C kit from:
> >
> > http://www.rsts.org/autoindex.php?dir=distros/RSTS_kits/&file=RSTS_V6C_Kit.zip
> 
> I tried booting that, and it does boot, but the startup does not run. No 
> system initialization is performed and I login as job 1 with no CCL's 
> defined. The version at https://skn.noip.me/pdp11/rk2.dsk does boot and has 
> all commands installed.
> 
> Looking at both environments there are two things I noticed as different from 
> the V06C-03 I was using in high school back in 1978. On our system we had 
> control-T available that was enabled and disabled along with control-R. ...
> 
> I have to wonder if we were running a version of V06C-03 with those 
> additional enhancements. It definitely was not 7.0. I graduated in June 1980 
> and I was told they upgraded to 7.0 that summer.

Control/T support was an optional feature, enabled during SYSGEN, for some 
time.  I'm fairly sure it was never an undocumented feature, but it wasn't 
standard originally.

paul

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Re: [Simh] Quest from 1979 on RSTS/E V06C-03 in Simh (Brett Bump)

[Robert G. Schaffrath]

> Or you could grab the pre-genned V6C kit from:
>
> 
http://www.rsts.org/autoindex.php?dir=distros/RSTS_kits/&file=RSTS_V6C_Kit.zip


I tried booting that, and it does boot, but the startup does not run. No 
system initialization is performed and I login as job 1 with no CCL's 
defined. The version at https://skn.noip.me/pdp11/rk2.dsk does boot and 
has all commands installed.


Looking at both environments there are two things I noticed as different 
from the V06C-03 I was using in high school back in 1978. On our system 
we had control-T available that was enabled and disabled along with 
control-R. What was interesting was that it would show the job priority 
for non-privileged users. Priority display was removed in 7.0 for 
non-privileged users. We hackers discovered that on a slow running 
system, one could repeatedly hit control-C during login and abort the 
change from logged out priority +0 to priority -8 by LOGIN (control-T 
let us see that we were still at +0). That gave our teacher and the 
county data center where we rented access to the PDP-11/70 system fits.  
Eventually they wrote a "guard" program that would drop the priority of 
any non-privileged job found to be greater -8. The problem with that 
check was that some jobs legitimately got bumped to -4 priority 
temporarily due to the set-special-run-priority syscall. The "guard" did 
not recognize that and pushed jobs back down to -8.


The other difference I noticed is that SYSTAT in privileged mode does 
not show the runburst. In privileged mode, SYSTAT had a "Pri/RB" column 
whereas this V06C-03 only has "Priority". That was documented in the 
RSTS/E manual I had bought from DEC.


I have to wonder if we were running a version of V06C-03 with those 
additional enhancements. It definitely was not 7.0. I graduated in June 
1980 and I was told they upgraded to 7.0 that summer.

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Re: [Simh] Quest from 1979 on RSTS/E V06C-03 in Simh

[Al Kossow]

On 12/29/18 11:12 AM, Al Kossow wrote:
> 
> 
> On 12/29/18 10:38 AM, Brett Bump wrote:
> 
>> No, you are correct.  Try as we may, there has never been found a copy for
>> RSTS/E prior to the (non functional) V06C-03 tape that sat dormant in my 
>> closet for the last 35 years.  Paul Nankervis
>> found the 1 block error in
>> the INIT.SYS file in 2017 and so V6C got resurrected.
> 
> here is the story..
> https://skn.noip.me/pdp11/RSTSv06c.html
> 
> I don't know if it has been documented on the list before

he also wonders why bitsavers has the docs for 5 and 6 but no tapes.

well, people keep paper in boxes in their garage and forget about it.

tapes are rarely so lucky.



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Re: [Simh] Quest from 1979 on RSTS/E V06C-03 in Simh

[Al Kossow]

On 12/29/18 10:38 AM, Brett Bump wrote:

> No, you are correct.  Try as we may, there has never been found a copy for
> RSTS/E prior to the (non functional) V06C-03 tape that sat dormant in my 
> closet for the last 35 years.  Paul Nankervis
> found the 1 block error in
> the INIT.SYS file in 2017 and so V6C got resurrected.

here is the story..
https://skn.noip.me/pdp11/RSTSv06c.html

I don't know if it has been documented on the list before




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Re: [Simh] Quest from 1979 on RSTS/E V06C-03 in Simh

[Brett Bump]

On Sat, 29 Dec 2018, Will Senn wrote:


All,

I had some fun over the past few days playing around with BASIC-PLUS and 
thought I would share it with you. I resurrected an old BASIC game and played 
it on SIMH running RSTS/E V06C-03 and BASIC-PLUS mostly to learn more about 
BASIC, my first language back in the day, but also to play an old style 
adventure inspired game that was originally written for a Commodore Pet 2001, 
the first computer I ever programmed.


Read on for some old time fun and reminiscence.

TLDR (links at bottom of email):
1. Grab SIMH
2. Grab RSTS/E V06C-03


Or you could grab the pre-genned V6C kit from:

http://www.rsts.org/autoindex.php?dir=distros/RSTS_kits/&file=RSTS_V6C_Kit.zip


3. Grab the source code
4. Fire up RSTS/E
5. Paste the source code into the BASIC-PLUS runtime
6. Play the game until you're weary of being lost
7. Read the code to 'cheat'

I wanted to learn BASIC "over the weekend". I found two books at the used 
bookstore that looked interesting on the subject:


1. Introduction to BASIC, by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), 1978.
2. BASIC, by M. Boillot and W. Horn, 1976

In preparing to go through the books, I wanted to find an environment that 
would allow me to just type in the examples, as written, and obtain the 
results, as written. So, I skimmed them looking for clues.


I found the following in the DEC book on page xv:

Because it is beyond the scope of this manual to describe each system and 
BASIC version, it is necessary to choose a representative pair for the 
presentation of examples. The examples in this manual are the result of using 
BASIC-PLUS on the RSTS/E system.


Further down the page, was an even more helpful bit:

In response to the HELLO input, RSTS/E prints a line of indentification such 
as:


RSTS V06B-02 Timesharing  Job 28  KB33  01-Dec-76  09:57 AM


The Boillot mentioned Dartmouth BASIC and it had pictures of DEC equipment, 
so I was hopeful I could find a DEC BASIC-PLUS environment to run examples 
from.


So I went looking for a PDP11 compatible RSTS V06B-02 Timesharing 
environment. Well, RSTS V06B-02 Timesharing doesn't appear to exist in 
accessible places on the internet. However, RSTS V06C-03, does. I downloaded 
the preconfigured RK disk image, fired up SIMH, and started a session:


No, you are correct.  Try as we may, there has never been found a copy for
RSTS/E prior to the (non functional) V06C-03 tape that sat dormant in my 
closet for the last 35 years.  Paul Nankervis found the 1 block error in

the INIT.SYS file in 2017 and so V6C got resurrected.  The list of missing
distros still unaccounted for are:

RSTS/E V5A, V5B, V5C
RSTS/E V6A, V6B
RSTS/E V7.1

Let me know if anyone finds any of these in an old dusty closet somewhere.

Brett



pdp11

PDP-11 simulator V4.0-0 Beta    git commit id: 0a00d806
sim> attach rk1 rk2.dsk
sim> b rk1
Device DP23: does not interrupt - device disabled.
Device DP26: does not interrupt - device disabled.
Device DP27: does not interrupt - device disabled.
Device DP30: does not interrupt - device disabled.
Device DP31: does not interrupt - device disabled.


RSTS V06C-03 Vixen (DK1)

Option: START
JOB MAX or SWAP MAX changes? N
Table suboption? EXIT
DD-MMM-YY? 10-MAR-88
12:03 AM? 12:00PM
Command File Name?

HELLO 11/70
Password: PDP (won't echo)

Fix a few annoyances in RSTS:
RUN $TTYSET
TTYSET  V06C-03 RSTS V06C-03 Vixen
Terminal characteristics program
? LC INPUT
? lc output
? scope
? exit

Ready

5 REM THE OBLIGATORY CONFIRMATION THAT THE WORLD IS OK
10 PRINT "HELLO, WORLD."

RUN
NONAME  12:18 AM    10-Mar-88
HELLO, WORLD.

Ready

Next, I found and downloaded DEC-11-ORBPB-A-D_BASIC-PLUS_LangMan_Jul75 and 
learned a bit about RSTS's dialog of BASCIC.


I tried some code from different sections of Boillot and they all worked as 
written. I tried a few from the DEC book and the manual and decided the 
environment was sufficient for learning BASIC. I then worked through both 
books and the manual. It's amazing how well written these books from a nearly 
forgotten era are compared to today's.


Once I got the hang of the language, I decided to go after a bigger fish - a 
'real' program, a game, of course. The game I chose was Quest, by Roger 
Chaffee, originally published in Byte magazine in July of 1979. I had heard 
of Quest through another BASIC game I had played extensively back in the day, 
called Treasure, by James L. Dean. Dean wrote Treasure in 1980 and he 
credited Quest as inspiration for his game.


I downloaded archive.org's copy of the original article and printed out the 
source code. I spent a day typing it in line by line and another fixing my 
typos and misinterpretations (try reading a scan of a 40 year old magazine 
page and see if you do any better). But, eventually, I was able to fire it 
up:


QUEST   01:13 AM    10-Mar-88
   QUEST

YOU WERE WALKING THROUGH THE
WOODS, AND YOU CAME ACROSS THE ENTRANCE
OF A CAVE, COVERED WITH BRUSH.

PEOPLE SAY TH

Re: [Simh] Quest from 1979 on RSTS/E V06C-03 in Simh

[Lyle Bickley]

Thanks, Will!

I played "Adventure" on RSTS/E back in the seventies. Now I'll give
"Quest" a shot on SIMH (or my 11/83 w/RSTS/E)...

Cheers,
Lyle
--
On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 09:42:49 -0600
Will Senn  wrote:

> All,
> 
> I had some fun over the past few days playing around with BASIC-PLUS
> and thought I would share it with you. I resurrected an old BASIC
> game and played it on SIMH running RSTS/E V06C-03 and BASIC-PLUS
> mostly to learn more about BASIC, my first language back in the day,
> but also to play an old style adventure inspired game that was
> originally written for a Commodore Pet 2001, the first computer I
> ever programmed.
> 
> Read on for some old time fun and reminiscence.
> 
> TLDR (links at bottom of email):
> 1. Grab SIMH
> 2. Grab RSTS/E V06C-03
> 3. Grab the source code
> 4. Fire up RSTS/E
> 5. Paste the source code into the BASIC-PLUS runtime
> 6. Play the game until you're weary of being lost
> 7. Read the code to 'cheat'
> 
> I wanted to learn BASIC "over the weekend". I found two books at the 
> used bookstore that looked interesting on the subject:
> 
> 1. Introduction to BASIC, by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC),
> 1978. 2. BASIC, by M. Boillot and W. Horn, 1976
> 
> In preparing to go through the books, I wanted to find an environment 
> that would allow me to just type in the examples, as written, and
> obtain the results, as written. So, I skimmed them looking for clues.
> 
> I found the following in the DEC book on page xv:
> 
> Because it is beyond the scope of this manual to describe each system 
> and BASIC version, it is necessary to choose a representative pair
> for the presentation of examples. The examples in this manual are the
> result of using BASIC-PLUS on the RSTS/E system.
> 
> Further down the page, was an even more helpful bit:
> 
> In response to the HELLO input, RSTS/E prints a line of
> indentification such as:
> 
> RSTS V06B-02 Timesharing  Job 28  KB33  01-Dec-76  09:57 AM
> 
> 
> The Boillot mentioned Dartmouth BASIC and it had pictures of DEC 
> equipment, so I was hopeful I could find a DEC BASIC-PLUS environment
> to run examples from.
> 
> So I went looking for a PDP11 compatible RSTS V06B-02 Timesharing 
> environment. Well, RSTS V06B-02 Timesharing doesn't appear to exist
> in accessible places on the internet. However, RSTS V06C-03, does. I 
> downloaded the preconfigured RK disk image, fired up SIMH, and
> started a session:
> 
> pdp11
> 
> PDP-11 simulator V4.0-0 Beta    git commit id: 0a00d806
> sim> attach rk1 rk2.dsk
> sim> b rk1  
> Device DP23: does not interrupt - device disabled.
> Device DP26: does not interrupt - device disabled.
> Device DP27: does not interrupt - device disabled.
> Device DP30: does not interrupt - device disabled.
> Device DP31: does not interrupt - device disabled.
> 
> 
> RSTS V06C-03 Vixen (DK1)
> 
> Option: START
> JOB MAX or SWAP MAX changes? N
> Table suboption? EXIT
> DD-MMM-YY? 10-MAR-88
> 12:03 AM? 12:00PM
> Command File Name?
> 
> HELLO 11/70
> Password: PDP (won't echo)
> 
> Fix a few annoyances in RSTS:
> RUN $TTYSET
> TTYSET  V06C-03 RSTS V06C-03 Vixen
> Terminal characteristics program
> ? LC INPUT
> ? lc output
> ? scope
> ? exit
> 
> Ready
> 
> 5 REM THE OBLIGATORY CONFIRMATION THAT THE WORLD IS OK
> 10 PRINT "HELLO, WORLD."
> 
> RUN
> NONAME  12:18 AM    10-Mar-88
> HELLO, WORLD.
> 
> Ready
> 
> Next, I found and downloaded
> DEC-11-ORBPB-A-D_BASIC-PLUS_LangMan_Jul75 and learned a bit about
> RSTS's dialog of BASCIC.
> 
> I tried some code from different sections of Boillot and they all
> worked as written. I tried a few from the DEC book and the manual and
> decided the environment was sufficient for learning BASIC. I then
> worked through both books and the manual. It's amazing how well
> written these books from a nearly forgotten era are compared to
> today's.
> 
> Once I got the hang of the language, I decided to go after a bigger
> fish 
> - a 'real' program, a game, of course. The game I chose was Quest, by 
> Roger Chaffee, originally published in Byte magazine in July of 1979.
> I had heard of Quest through another BASIC game I had played
> extensively back in the day, called Treasure, by James L. Dean. Dean
> wrote Treasure in 1980 and he credited Quest as inspiration for his
> game.
> 
> I downloaded archive.org's copy of the original article and printed
> out the source code. I spent a day typing it in line by line and
> another fixing my typos and misinterpretations (try reading a scan of
> a 40 year old magazine page and see if you do any better). But,
> eventually, I was able to fire it up:
> 
> QUEST   01:13 AM    10-Mar-88
>     QUEST
> 
> YOU WERE WALKING THROUGH THE
> WOODS, AND YOU CAME ACROSS THE ENTRANCE
> OF A CAVE, COVERED WITH BRUSH.
> 
> PEOPLE SAY THAT MANY YEARS AGO A
> PIRATE HID HIS TREASURE IN THESE
> WOODS, BUT NO ONE HAS EVER FOUND IT.
> IT MAY STILL BE HERE, FOR ALL I KNOW.
> 
> WHEN YOU ANSWER A QUESTION, I LOOK AT
> ONLY THE FIRST LETTER, A

[Simh] Quest from 1979 on RSTS/E V06C-03 in Simh

[Will Senn]

All,

I had some fun over the past few days playing around with BASIC-PLUS and 
thought I would share it with you. I resurrected an old BASIC game and 
played it on SIMH running RSTS/E V06C-03 and BASIC-PLUS mostly to learn 
more about BASIC, my first language back in the day, but also to play an 
old style adventure inspired game that was originally written for a 
Commodore Pet 2001, the first computer I ever programmed.


Read on for some old time fun and reminiscence.

TLDR (links at bottom of email):
1. Grab SIMH
2. Grab RSTS/E V06C-03
3. Grab the source code
4. Fire up RSTS/E
5. Paste the source code into the BASIC-PLUS runtime
6. Play the game until you're weary of being lost
7. Read the code to 'cheat'

I wanted to learn BASIC "over the weekend". I found two books at the 
used bookstore that looked interesting on the subject:


1. Introduction to BASIC, by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), 1978.
2. BASIC, by M. Boillot and W. Horn, 1976

In preparing to go through the books, I wanted to find an environment 
that would allow me to just type in the examples, as written, and obtain 
the results, as written. So, I skimmed them looking for clues.


I found the following in the DEC book on page xv:

Because it is beyond the scope of this manual to describe each system 
and BASIC version, it is necessary to choose a representative pair for 
the presentation of examples. The examples in this manual are the result 
of using BASIC-PLUS on the RSTS/E system.


Further down the page, was an even more helpful bit:

In response to the HELLO input, RSTS/E prints a line of indentification 
such as:


RSTS V06B-02 Timesharing  Job 28  KB33  01-Dec-76  09:57 AM


The Boillot mentioned Dartmouth BASIC and it had pictures of DEC 
equipment, so I was hopeful I could find a DEC BASIC-PLUS environment to 
run examples from.


So I went looking for a PDP11 compatible RSTS V06B-02 Timesharing 
environment. Well, RSTS V06B-02 Timesharing doesn't appear to exist in 
accessible places on the internet. However, RSTS V06C-03, does. I 
downloaded the preconfigured RK disk image, fired up SIMH, and started a 
session:


pdp11

PDP-11 simulator V4.0-0 Beta    git commit id: 0a00d806
sim> attach rk1 rk2.dsk
sim> b rk1
Device DP23: does not interrupt - device disabled.
Device DP26: does not interrupt - device disabled.
Device DP27: does not interrupt - device disabled.
Device DP30: does not interrupt - device disabled.
Device DP31: does not interrupt - device disabled.


RSTS V06C-03 Vixen (DK1)

Option: START
JOB MAX or SWAP MAX changes? N
Table suboption? EXIT
DD-MMM-YY? 10-MAR-88
12:03 AM? 12:00PM
Command File Name?

HELLO 11/70
Password: PDP (won't echo)

Fix a few annoyances in RSTS:
RUN $TTYSET
TTYSET  V06C-03 RSTS V06C-03 Vixen
Terminal characteristics program
? LC INPUT
? lc output
? scope
? exit

Ready

5 REM THE OBLIGATORY CONFIRMATION THAT THE WORLD IS OK
10 PRINT "HELLO, WORLD."

RUN
NONAME  12:18 AM    10-Mar-88
HELLO, WORLD.

Ready

Next, I found and downloaded DEC-11-ORBPB-A-D_BASIC-PLUS_LangMan_Jul75 
and learned a bit about RSTS's dialog of BASCIC.


I tried some code from different sections of Boillot and they all worked 
as written. I tried a few from the DEC book and the manual and decided 
the environment was sufficient for learning BASIC. I then worked through 
both books and the manual. It's amazing how well written these books 
from a nearly forgotten era are compared to today's.


Once I got the hang of the language, I decided to go after a bigger fish 
- a 'real' program, a game, of course. The game I chose was Quest, by 
Roger Chaffee, originally published in Byte magazine in July of 1979. I 
had heard of Quest through another BASIC game I had played extensively 
back in the day, called Treasure, by James L. Dean. Dean wrote Treasure 
in 1980 and he credited Quest as inspiration for his game.


I downloaded archive.org's copy of the original article and printed out 
the source code. I spent a day typing it in line by line and another 
fixing my typos and misinterpretations (try reading a scan of a 40 year 
old magazine page and see if you do any better). But, eventually, I was 
able to fire it up:


QUEST   01:13 AM    10-Mar-88
   QUEST

YOU WERE WALKING THROUGH THE
WOODS, AND YOU CAME ACROSS THE ENTRANCE
OF A CAVE, COVERED WITH BRUSH.

PEOPLE SAY THAT MANY YEARS AGO A
PIRATE HID HIS TREASURE IN THESE
WOODS, BUT NO ONE HAS EVER FOUND IT.
IT MAY STILL BE HERE, FOR ALL I KNOW.

WHEN YOU ANSWER A QUESTION, I LOOK AT
ONLY THE FIRST LETTER, ALTHOUGH YOU CAN
TYPE THE WHOLE WORD IF YOU WANT.

TYPE N,S,E,W,U, OR D FOR NORTH, SOUTH,
EAST,WEST, UP OR DOWN. TYPE P FOR SCORE


YOU'RE OUTSIDE THE CAVE.
GO SOUTH TO ENTER.

 WHICH WAY?

Yeeha! Three and a half hours later, I had had found the treasure and 
was wandering around trying to find my way out. I scoured the article 
for hints and found:


It is possible to get through the cave by reading the program and 
decoding 

[Simh] PDP-11/70 action

[Johnny Billquist]

I'm going to be playing with Magica tonight. So if anyone wants some 
specific test or thing done on a real PDP-11/70, including stuff on the 
front panel, let me know in the next 12h or so, and I'll try to accommodate.


I have some work of my own that I'll be doing as well. But since the 
cooling system isn't working well, I can't leave her on for now. So it's 
tonight only this time. (Hopefully we'll get the cooling sorted soon, 
and then she'll be back online full time again.)


  Johnny

--
Johnny Billquist  || "I'm on a bus
  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: b...@softjar.se ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive! ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
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Re: [Simh] Systems Engineering Labs (SEL) simh simulator available

[Jordi Guillaumes i Pons]

Nowadays, the easiest way to distribute binaries is to use containers. I made 
some containerised simh images (I’ve not upgraded them for a while though). 
Details in my blog 
http://ancientbits.blogspot.com/2016/05/containerizing-simh-bsd-in-box.html?m=1

Jordi Guillaumes Pons


El 27 des 2018, a les 23:45, Clem Cole  va escriure:

> 
> 
>> On Wed, Dec 26, 2018 at 7:03 PM David Brownlee  wrote:
>> Well, Joyent also makes binary pkgsrc packages for SmartOS, macOS, and 
>> CentOS/REL :) https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/
> 
> xkcd on standards  sigh.
> 
> Note: I have lived this issue at Intel for +10 years BTW [we make a very 
> slick set of development tools that are compatible across different OS's]
> 
> So I will step on top of Soap Box   
> 
> As I often have to remind some of our more our engineers at work installs, 
> particularly binary installs, must be socially compliant with the OS - i.e. 
> what the customer expects.  This is the 'least astonishment principle.'
> 
> That means custom installers that are common for the tool, but different from 
> the native OS are a no-no if you really want someone to use the tool as a 
> binary. [And that's expensive and hard to do well BTW].
> 
> Yup, custom installers makes it easier for >>you<< but not for the person 
> doing the installs.   So if you make the choice to support an OS, 
> particularly as a binary, then the install needs to be for that OS --- for 
> winders its a different  installer than from DOS which is different than VMS. 
>For VMS its the DEC Installer.  For, the UNIX family Solaris is different 
> from the loathsome DEC setld(8) of Ultrix and Tru64, which is different from 
> IBM AIX which is different from HP-UX, etc  Linux gets really strange on 
> the binary front.   The good news is the commerical folks using Linux it is 
> primarily rpm and there are tools the convert from tools that convert from 
> rpm to yum/getapt etc., but generally Linux folks generally do not want a 
> binary installer ;-)  But there are N different Linux package managers and 
> each one is 'better' than the other?   If you have a binary distribution for 
> your tool, which do you use?
> 
> That said 
> 
> simh is a wonderful tool and the fruits of the labor of many people.  But I 
> see it as primarily a github (source) release.   When Mark graceously does 
> make a binary, he seems to follow least astonishment.   But since he has made 
> the sources available and some distro's have picked it up and created 
> binaries of their own, many have done a poor job of following up with the 
> source distribution.   Which of course, fails the least astonishment 
> principle also (because it's easier for the distro maintainers of course).  
> They can claim they have 'simh' but because they made it eaiser for 
> themselves, they are in effect an older (unmaintained) 'fork' or the tree.
> 
> And this is the of course is a flaw in FOSS.   The economics don't follow.   
> Ecomonically, you want to make it as easy on the builder of the tool if your 
> 'product' is the sources.  Which is what Mark does (an excellent job IMO as 
> its pretty impressive the number of OS's that can build it).
> 
> But if you take the sources and package it and create an installer ... well 
> Mark and Bob should speak for themselves  but I think that is you own 
> problem; not simh's
> 
> Stepping down from Soap Box ...
> 
> I will grant you that the users of simh are likely to be a tad more techie 
> than 'the average bear.'   But to me that says, you can trust them to go to 
> github, do a 'clone' and then build it themselves.
> 
> My thinking at least 
> 
> Clem
> ᐧ
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