This one might be interesting to anyone interested in computer gaming history.

I spent the last couple of weeks finally finishing a project I started for Bletchley Park about 20 years ago. Recreating the original MUD and MIST on a mirror of the original Essex University system that finally closed in 1991.

Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle wrote the first online multi-user game (MUD) on Essex University's DECSystem-10 in 1978 and it ran till I closed it in 1991. I diligently backed everything up so I could potentially recover it one day, but as far as I can see, all the DECSystem-10's went to the great scrapyard in the sky, my backups were mostly stolen when my first museum was stolen, and I had huge issues recovering the Essex BCPL compiler to compile what I had left when I finally got a decent TOPS-10 emulator running on a VAX for Bletchley Park.

One good thing about being an unemployable whistleblower is free time, so I finally hunkered down to some 90 hour weeks and built a software replica of the Essex system I think reflects it well. It's running on a KS10 not a KL10 but I had to let some things slip.

I put the latest known versions of MUD and MIST on it, and miraculously found ROCK too.

So, to meander to the point, if you want to see and relive exactly what online multi user gaming was like from 1978 to 1991, you can go to https://dec10.uknet.net and login as guest, then follow the terse instructions from there.

In those days, you were generally faced with a "." prompt and left mostly alone, so for authenticity, I will leave it at that.

I should note that although they were, in their day, wildly popular games with a relatively huge community, this is a museum peice in snapshot-form at the moment. But I will leave them up and running to see what happens and as a useful reference. I wasn't going to, but Richard seemed happy to have MUD running, and former MIST players wanted it back, so...

Pop this a share if you know folks who might be interested.

#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering

(don't try this on a phone!)

The #Linux man-pages profil(3) says

HISTORY
Similar to a call in SVr4

bruh, it's identical to the call that's been there since Research #UNIX v5 (OK, except that in v5 you disabled profiling by passing scale=0, while on Linux you disable profiling by passing buf=NULL; but in practice the common way to call it is profil(0, 0, 0, 0) so it doesn't really matter which arg it keys on).

(#OpenBSD profil(2) correctly states v5, #FreeBSD profil(2) claims it goes back to v3, but I think the evidence for that is dubious.)

#ComputingHistory #RetroComputing

Bootblock Rebels is a book about the Amiga cracking scene (1986-1996) - the coders, suppliers, BBS sysops, and groups who built one of the most fascinating underground computer cultures of the 80s and 90s.

The project is now live on Kickstarter and already fully funded, but you can still join and support the book.

#amiga #retrogaming #demoscene #amigascene #kickstarter #bootblockrebels #computinghistory #retrocomputing #cracking #90scomputing

The history of the PC: From 8bit to 64bit and everything in-between. - @retrobytes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOJ73rjNYbc

#retrocomputing #computinghistory

Dear Time Lords: Freeze Computers in 1993

https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/322461.html

#HackerNews #Dear #Time #Lords: #Freeze #Computers #in #1993 #TimeTravel #ComputingHistory #Nostalgia #HackerNews #TechThrowback

How the 1880 Census Led to the Invention of the Computer

https://makertube.net/w/6hyvo18NRSG7of5SqJ6n2u

#silicium collection 1986 :
IBM XT/286 (modèle 5162)
Un “XT” qui cache un 80286 : la machine de la transition, entre l’XT classique et l’AT.
📼💾
Sériosité corporate, compatible, évolutive (ISA), et aujourd’hui un vrai petit jalon de l’histoire PC.

Le connaissais-tu ?

#RetroComputing #IBM #XT286 #VintageTech #ComputingHistory #ClassicComputers