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VCF 7.0: BBS Bonanza in Bay Area
RaD Man [ACiD] writes "Vintage Computer Festival 7.0 will be taking place November 6-7th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California! In addition to the tours of antiquities and computer history galore, VCF 7.0 will be hosting a unique Retro Video Game Programming Challenge and presenting a number of interesting seminar speakers, such as the inventor of FidoNet, Tom Jennings. The VCF founder will also be appearing on G4TechTV's "The Screen Savers" this Tuesday, October 19th, to demonstrate some of his favorite artifacts."
For those who don't remember the BBS era (all you youngins =) ), I'll fill you in on LORD. Basically, every modern MMORPG owes its existence, in my opinion, to LoRD. Created by Seth Able, it was the first popular "Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game". Granted, it wasn't very massive (I think it allowed up to 200 people max), and the number of people that could be on at once was limited to the incoming phone lines at the BBS, but it was still the first popularized game (perhaps the first period? I'm not positive, but it's the first I knew of) that featured MMORPG-type gameplay. It was decades ahead of its time.
Some of you may know Seth Able but not that milestone achievement, since he is also a pioneer in the Independant game industry these days. Anyways, Seth Able is not only a great programmer in this time, he was an innovator back when a 1200 baud modem was reserved for only the most wealthy of computer users.
Ah, old school memories... =)
-Vendal Thornheart
A friend of mine had a Kaypro Four which he overclocked. It had originally had (if I'm remembering correctly) a 4MHz 8085, which he replaced with an 8MHz Z80 (and a new crystal). He had to replace a few of the other big chips on the board, as I recall. When he was done, he had a machine that was way faster then the IBM PC with its measly 4.77MHZ 8088.
This was in about 1981. He was doing freelance programming, using SBasic, and claimed speeding up the compiles was worth the few bucks to took to do the work.
Them was the good old days.
See what I've been reading.
I've been going to the Vintage Computer Festival for years, and it's always a great time.The nostalgia factor alone is worth the cost of admission, PLUS you're sure to learn something new every time you go. Sam Ismail always does a great job.
And when you're done playing with historical microcomputers at the VCF, walk down the hall to see the "heavy iron" that led to PCs at the Compter History Museum.
This show kicks ass. Don't miss it.
Tom Geller
Clearly you haven't played MUD which (as far as I can tell from research) predated LORD by over 10 years. LORD according to one site I checked started in the "early '90s" whereas MUD...
> The history of MUDs all starts in the UK, about 1979. Roy Trubshaw, a student at Essex University, started writing MUD, a game written in BCPL on a DEC-10. Along with Richard Bartle, who tidied up the system and added a very crude database compiler for it, they produced a very good combat game for it.
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
Bay Area newspapers are reporting the congregation of a record number of virgins in Mountain View......
Tying into the underlying BBS theme this year, VCF will be hosting the first and only public screening of the long anticipated BBS Documentary which is due out on DVD late this year.
One other interesting fact about original MUD from the 1980s involving a VERY well known character:-
;)
One player of the Essex MUD was Alan Cox, also known as Anarchy. He wrote (with a bit of help) AberMUD, named after the University of Aberystwyth, Wales, which he attended at the time. It was originally implemented on a Honeywell mainframe running GCOS but was soon ported to UNIX. Its poor design and implementation (all game information was stored in a shared file, which meant that several processes were constantly accessing the disc) did not endear it to many system administrators. Nevertheless, it was the first MUD to gain widespread popularity. After the source code reached the United States, several people made enhancements and additions, notably Rich $alz. It now seems to have found a home at St. Olaf University, where a few dedicated hackers are keeping it alive despite its general grunginess.
I believe he's still programming somewhere & has improved greatly...
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
In case you guys don't understand the significance of RaD Man posting this story, he leads the ACiD artwork group. ACiD was the biggest, and best, ansi art group back in the day. They had distro's all over the world at one point, and if you had original ACiD art on your board, you were leet.
I miss the BBS days. There was something appealing to me about playing B.R.E, L.O.R.D, Barneysplat, posting FIDOnet messages, and trying to figure out ways to scam the upload/download credit system. Bulletin boards definately helped inspire some of the basic fundamental utilities we have on the internet today - message boards, games, file transfers, we had it all.
It really was some of the best times i've ever had with a computer, period. I'm only 24 and this is literally part of my childhood. I urge any old sysops, or anyone who is curious to check out the BBS Documentary website for more nostalgia & information.
708/312 repruhzent.
And take my classic Zenith Supersport 286e. It would seem modern to some of the computers that will be on display there.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
i wish there was something like that remotely close to where I am, old computer systems are so cool. i think its a shame that there isn't something that we can do with all that old equipment
Nah... TradeWars 2002 ! I still have a license key for it. The rights to TW have been sold to "a new guy" and you can now even buy a network-enabled server.
Just the mention of vintage computers and BBS's brings out the nostalgic geezer in me. I remember playing Trek-73 on my high school's Teletype ASR33 in the late 70's. Later on we moved to Spacewar on the Apple II.
In the mid-80's I played Tradewars online using my Tandy Coco and a 300 baud modem. I think the name of the BBS was Microfone in Secaucus NJ.
I spent A LOT of money calling BBS's around the country looking for files and having interesting chats and message board discussions.
It's almost all too easy now with the Internet and Google.
Self awareness - try it!
What first drew me online and kept me excited for years was the sense of community that people had in the BBS scene before the rising popularity of the Web. Despite many attempts at creating this same feeling on the web from AIM, to Craigslist, Friendster, gMail to even Slashdot or Kuro5hin, I have not been able to develop the same type of relationships. It seems almost bizarre to suggest that a global online community could have a BBQ or meet for dinner at a local fast food restaurant.
People like Jom Jennings of FidoNet and Scott Converse of OneNet really deserve to be recognized by organizations like the VCF. The communities they fostered, perhaps because local dial-up networks kept everything provincal, are probably what I miss about the modern Internet with its spammers, phishers, con artists, Patriot Act, unsecure email and general lack of polite behavior. More than anything else, this misplaced sense of community is what I miss about the early days online.
"...What is good for General Motors is good for America." -Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense and fmr President of GM
C'mon crack open an old computer programming book, boot up an emulator (or for us collectors, dust off one of those micros you have stacked in the corner.) and practice writing your three-hour masterpiece.
Resources for Retrocoders:
Atari Archives bookshelf, includes many 6502/BASIC related books
Project 64's C64 Manuals & Programmer's Reference Guide
Here's some Apple IIgs manuals. :-/
Not much of any on-line accessible resources for Apple IIs, where are all the real Apple II fans!!???
As a retrocode winner, I would sugest looking at the stuff in the Atari Archives (the BASIC Games books) to get ideas of the type of games that are doable in three hours (no, not Super Star Trek, the smaller ones!) But I wouldn't write any of 'em verbatim, you get points for making it more modern, flashier, and/or vintage computer related.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield