Lorry3d ago

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

https://dec10.uknet.net

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

Or:

telnet telnet.dec10.uknet.net

(Port 2653 is available for ISPs that block 23)

And 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.

** Update: New web client that works better.

** Another update - I added a telnet client.

Historically, the telnet connection is much more true to the traditional experience, where you were connecting to a working machine that didn't care about the MUD Guests, so there were no pointers at all. Just rumour and hearsay :)

If any of you Unix/Security people notice I messed up something, please tell me. I left "^], !sh" open on the telnet link for about 2 minutes and nearly had a heart-attack once I spotted it :D

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

(don't try this on a phone!)

ttyd - Terminal

Show threadLiam Proven

@lorry

> my backups were mostly stolen when my first museum was stolen

I think this merits considerable expansion... (!)

Mar 17 at 1:08pmWeb
Show threadLorry3d ago

@lproven Ah it's a sad story.

I used to do a lot of work in preservation, partly because when I was working on Edinburgh's Tardis program (I think @cstross was on that?) I had to drive around trying to find bits of hardware for maintenance from places like Daresbury Labs, and it was depressing seeing what they were throwing away - And this was in 1990 - But I would take what I could rescue in a van or car, and try to find places to store it.

Sadly two of the places were a storage unit, and the back of my land-rover for a while, and the storage unit was broken into and the Land Rover stolen (which is another rant) - So I lost 100% of the offline backups (tapes , listings and game-design notes), including the first Multi User game I wrote on a PRIME in 1984 (and also my first computer dating app in 1983/1984 too!).

I had some bits left, mostly the small bits, and I rebuilt a lot of it ( some on https://old.technology, the gallery software broke years ago, so there are no proper descriptions ).

I gave a bunch of my stuff to Bletchley Park when I moved to Canada, and resisted taking too much away. They had a PERQ there that I desperately wanted to crush and eradicate from history in the car park, but they wouldn't let me.

Weirdly, there was a submarine in the car park at the time too - But I am going way off topic :)

Show threadLiam Proven3d ago
@lorry @cstross Oh my! That is _extremely_ unfortunate.
Show threadMycotropic3d ago

@lorry @lproven @cstross

I grew up in Manassas Virginia just down the road from an IBM campus, I started high school in 1980. I was friends with a "computer nerd" with the last name Fry, his dad's name was Terry. Terry had this hobby of doing what you were doing, hitting the junk yard and acquiring discarded hardware. IBM would make space in their facilities by putting old gear into a truck and dropping it off at the junkyard so Terry would pull up behind them, load it back up and take it home. We're talking mainframe equipment l, six foot tall magnetic tape drives cabinets, audio modems that required a telephone handset, stuff like that.

I have no idea what models or anything but my friend had a green background monitor and he'd log on to the 1980's message boards and download Phone-Phreq lists so we all had free long distance for years!

The first game I ever played was Hammurabi's Code though!

Show threadWes George3d ago
I live in Manassas now, and today I learned it used to have an IBM facility! It's apparently housing Lockheed and BAE today.
Show threadDave Ackley3d ago
@lorry @lproven @cstross
ah i remember.. "the best thing about PERQs is they don't run faster at night"
Show threadLorry3d ago

@livcomp @lproven @cstross The best thing about PERQs is that they are a decent shape to drive a large truck over.

(Actually, the bee "busy" icon was cool the first time you saw it, but that is it!)

Show threadIan Turton3d ago

@lorry @[email protected] @cstross I was just going to say that I had played it on TARDIS. I recall it went brrrm brrrm if you asked for Laurie

Oh those were the days, when I was first exposed to Unix while work was still on EMAS.