Zork for the PDP-11 / RT-11 recreated | Hacker News Reader

Zork for the PDP-11 / RT-11 recreated

virtuallyfun.com

57 pointsjandeboevrie6 comments

Actual game files seem to be here: https://github.com/historicalsource/

I also had trouble finding the window binaries for simh on the official github repo and wound up using a fork: https://github.com/bscottm/open-simh/releases/tag/simh-4.1.0...

You can go one step further on Windows and compile the games from source!

You'll want to use ZILF https://virtuallyfun.com/2019/04/17/so-the-infocom-source-co...

This site has a far more extensive and interesting list of the Infocom games https://eblong.com/infocom/

As for simh I did keep binaries on the old sourceforge page ( https://sourceforge.net/projects/simh/ ) although it's not the aggressive new one on github. I know people cry about sourceforge but they went under new management years ago and fired everyone responsible for that piggyback fiasco.

Awesome, thanks. I was getting some sort of version error with the game file I was trying, but https://eblong.com/infocom/gamefiles/zork1-r119-s880429.z3 did the trick (renamed to zork.iml and copied into the vm).

Also in case anyone else is new to simh, you put the files in question in a folder then run path/to/pdp11.exe wherever simh installed it. CTRL+E is how you suspend the VM and can give it further commands from a simh> prompt, then the 'c' command to continue. Once inside the pdp11 vm "DIR" to confirm the stuff you're copying actually exists.

I've actually never gotten anything like this running before, very cool.

I should make some videos on how to use it as it is daunting.

But I’m glad you got it to run! Totally cool!!!

In the 80s, I played “Dungeon” (predecessor to Zork) on an accoustic-coupled teletype my dad brought home from JPL. It was running on one of the PDP-11s there. An intern from Caltech had altered the text of Dungeon so the story took place in the area (Flood Control Dam #3 was moved into Arroyo Seco). I went though a lot of fan-fold paper.

Indeed! What makes this version interesting is that it brings the retail interpreter to the PDP-11 to give access to not only Zork1/2/3 but planet fall, and a host of the rest of the z3 adventures across the Infocom Universe!

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