Simon Bisson

@sbisson
1.1K Followers
1.3K Following
2.5K Posts
👨‍💻Tech journalist: InfoWorld, ZDNet, etc đź’»Beats: enterprise, Microsoft, dev, cloud 🏡Vrai Jerri, reads lots, takes photos, writes SFF 📱[email protected] 🕸️ sbisson.com
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GitHubhttps://github.com/shbisson
Simon Bisson1d ago
Recent Reads: Lawless - Ballots Over Badrock. Dan Abnett's neo-noir space western sage continues, with elections, corruption, and a monster underneath the streets. Nothing is going right for Metta Lawson and she can only watch as her town goes to hell in its handbasket. But that doesn't stop her.
Simon Bisson1d ago
Lorry1d 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

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: I replaced all the annoying Guacamole stuff with a straight through path on a different machine. So it should work now and be more stable.

#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!)

ttyd - Terminal

Simon Bisson3d ago
Recent Reads: Lawless Book 4 - Boom Town. Another volume of Dan Abnett’s neo-noir space western. Meet the new boss, the same as the old boss. Bedrock’s status as Freetown is threatened as with money comes corruption. Meanwhile old threats resurface, along with a musical. It all makes sense. Onward!
Simon Bisson4d ago
Recent Reads: Free Planet Volume 1. Aubrey Sitterson’s graphic novel mixes narrative art and infographics to tell the story of the early days of a world that has rebelled against the status quo.But can its fractious new guardians come together in its hour of need? Political SF for anarchosocialists.
Simon BissonMar 5
Recent Reads: Lawless Book 3 - Ashes To Ashes. Dan Abnett's neo-noir space western gets all timey-wimey as Munce bring the hammer down on Badrock. But this is a town built on a natural psychic amplifier and as secrets come out, so destinies change. Metta Lawson knows it's better to talk than shoot.
Simon BissonMar 4
Recent Reads: Lawless Book 2 - Long-Range War. Dan Abnett's neo-noir space western continues to mashup Deadwood and Chinatown. Marshal Metta Lawson and allies need to face up to megacorp attacks on their frontier town. Time to see the difference between justice and law in action. It's all justified.
Simon BissonFeb 28
Recent Reads: Croma Venture. Joel Shepherd's Spiral Wars milSF space opera continues in the aftermath of a battle for the AI city Defiance. With Phoenix's refit nearly complete, it's time for politics and plans. A mission to meet the mysterious Croma leaves us on the verge of new wars. Complicated!
Simon BissonFeb 27
Recent Reads: Lawless Book 1 - Welcome to Badrock. Dan Abnett and Phil Winsdale expand the Dreddverse with this space western noir mashup. Deadwood meets Chinatown in the ruins of interstellar war, and one woman is going to try to clean up. But big business wants profits and Badrock is in the way.
Simon BissonFeb 26
Recent Reads: Griz Grobus. Simon Roy's graphic SF novel takes us to a world rebuilding after the fall of an interstellar civilisation. Reminiscent of Walter Jon Williams and Vernor Vinge, a mix of high and low tech and in-universe fiction that holds clues to the wars that ended things. Excellent.
Simon BissonFeb 25
Recent Reads: Death In A Strange Country. The second of Donna Leon's Venetian mysteries takes on American military corruption. Commissario Brunetti must navigate politics to investigate the death of a soldier. This is not a tidy mystery and there is no happy ending. Despite this, an excellent read.