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DEC Oral Histories

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  DEC Oral Histories Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-03-09 00:29 +0000
    Re: DEC Oral Histories Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2026-03-09 02:47 +0000
      Re: DEC Oral Histories "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2026-03-09 19:28 +0000
        Re: DEC Oral Histories Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2026-03-09 23:07 +0000
      Re: DEC Oral Histories Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2026-03-09 17:13 -0400
        Re: DEC Oral Histories "George Cornelius" <cornelius@decuserve.org.invalid> - 2026-03-16 08:42 +0000
          Re: DEC Oral Histories scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-03-16 15:04 +0000
          Re: DEC Oral Histories Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2026-03-16 14:46 -0400

#234069 — DEC Oral Histories

A recent addition to Bitsavers
<https://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/history/> is a bunch of
transcripts of interviews with various former DEC personnel.

I’ve just been reading the Bob Supnik one. Why did I pick that?
because his is a name I remember as the mastermind behind the
well-known SIMH series of software emulators of
historically-significant computer systems.

But the interview is dated 1991, before all this. It talks about his
career at DEC. On top of the fact that the audio was terrible, I think
the transcriber was not familiar with the subject matter: the company
name written as “Xylog” could probably be “Zilog”. And “queue-bus” is
obviously “Q-Bus”.

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#234070

On 2026-03-09, Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> A recent addition to Bitsavers
> <https://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/history/> is a bunch of
> transcripts of interviews with various former DEC personnel.
>
> I’ve just been reading the Bob Supnik one. Why did I pick that?
> because his is a name I remember as the mastermind behind the
> well-known SIMH series of software emulators of
> historically-significant computer systems.

The first thing I think of when I hear Bob Supnik's name
is Adventure (which morphed into Zork).  I finally got my
hands on the FORTRAH source code and ported it to run on
the mainframe I was working on at the time (Univac 90/30).

-- 
/~\  Charlie Gibbs                  |  Growth for the sake of
\ /  <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid>      |  growth is the ideology
 X   I'm really at ac.dekanfrus     |  of the cancer cell.
/ \  if you read it the right way.  |    -- Edward Abbey

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#234075

On Mon, 09 Mar 2026 02:47:50 GMT
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:

> On 2026-03-09, Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
> 
> > A recent addition to Bitsavers
> > <https://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/history/> is a bunch of
> > transcripts of interviews with various former DEC personnel.
> >
> > I’ve just been reading the Bob Supnik one. Why did I pick that?
> > because his is a name I remember as the mastermind behind the
> > well-known SIMH series of software emulators of
> > historically-significant computer systems.
> 
> The first thing I think of when I hear Bob Supnik's name
> is Adventure (which morphed into Zork).  I finally got my
> hands on the FORTRAH source code and ported it to run on
> the mainframe I was working on at the time (Univac 90/30).
> 
Zork <> Colossal Cave

> -- 
> /~\  Charlie Gibbs                  |  Growth for the sake of
> \ /  <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid>      |  growth is the ideology
>  X   I'm really at ac.dekanfrus     |  of the cancer cell.
> / \  if you read it the right way.  |    -- Edward Abbey


-- 
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

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#234084

On 2026-03-09, Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:

> On Mon, 09 Mar 2026 02:47:50 GMT
> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 2026-03-09, Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>> 
>>> A recent addition to Bitsavers
>>> <https://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/history/> is a bunch of
>>> transcripts of interviews with various former DEC personnel.
>>>
>>> I’ve just been reading the Bob Supnik one. Why did I pick that?
>>> because his is a name I remember as the mastermind behind the
>>> well-known SIMH series of software emulators of
>>> historically-significant computer systems.
>> 
>> The first thing I think of when I hear Bob Supnik's name
>> is Adventure (which morphed into Zork).  I finally got my
>> hands on the FORTRAH source code and ported it to run on
>> the mainframe I was working on at the time (Univac 90/30).
> 
> Zork <> Colossal Cave

True.  But I got hold of the source code for Dungeon and
ported it too.  The ports were challenging - I had to deal
with ASCII-to-EBCDIC translation and work around DEC extensions
to FORTRAN.  But the biggest challenge was making terminal I/O -
designed for character-mode terminals - work on the block-mode
polled protocol that was typical of mainframes.

-- 
/~\  Charlie Gibbs                  |  Growth for the sake of
\ /  <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid>      |  growth is the ideology
 X   I'm really at ac.dekanfrus     |  of the cancer cell.
/ \  if you read it the right way.  |    -- Edward Abbey

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#234079

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:

> The first thing I think of when I hear Bob Supnik's name is Adventure (which
> morphed into Zork).  I finally got my hands on the FORTRAH source code and
> ported it to run on the mainframe I was working on at the time (Univac
> 90/30).

Adevnture is the Colossal Cave program (original by Will Crowther, fantasy
elements by Don woods).  It was always in FORTRAN.

ZORK is the MIT Dynamic Modeling reaction to Adventure, written in a Lisp
dialect called MDL ("Modeling Dynamics Language").

Dungeon is what Bob called *his* port of ZORK to Fortran.

See which way the morphing went?

-- 
Rich Alderson					  news@alderson.users.panix.com
      Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
	  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
									--Galen

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#234106

Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> wrote:
> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
> 
>> The first thing I think of when I hear Bob Supnik's name is Adventure (which
>> morphed into Zork).  I finally got my hands on the FORTRAH source code and
>> ported it to run on the mainframe I was working on at the time (Univac
>> 90/30).
> 
> Adevnture is the Colossal Cave program (original by Will Crowther, fantasy
> elements by Don woods).  It was always in FORTRAN.
> 
> ZORK is the MIT Dynamic Modeling reaction to Adventure, written in a Lisp
> dialect called MDL ("Modeling Dynamics Language").
> 
> Dungeon is what Bob called *his* port of ZORK to Fortran.
> 
> See which way the morphing went?

Thanks for the clarification, Rich.

I still have my username/password for Paul Allen's xkleten, where I would
run the original version. Thanks for your work in making that available to
us - too bad it's gone.

I spent lots of hours on Dungeon under RSX-11M, some in the twisty
little passages all alike.

My early experiences on PC's and C64 systems was not particularly good,
especially given that Zork was broken up into Zork I, Zork II, etc., so
I appreciated being able to run the original version instead.

George

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#234109

"George Cornelius" <cornelius@decuserve.org.invalid> writes:
>Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> wrote:
>> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
>> 
>>> The first thing I think of when I hear Bob Supnik's name is Adventure (which
>>> morphed into Zork).  I finally got my hands on the FORTRAH source code and
>>> ported it to run on the mainframe I was working on at the time (Univac
>>> 90/30).
>> 
>> Adevnture is the Colossal Cave program (original by Will Crowther, fantasy
>> elements by Don woods).  It was always in FORTRAN.
>> 
>> ZORK is the MIT Dynamic Modeling reaction to Adventure, written in a Lisp
>> dialect called MDL ("Modeling Dynamics Language").
>> 
>> Dungeon is what Bob called *his* port of ZORK to Fortran.
>> 
>> See which way the morphing went?
>
>Thanks for the clarification, Rich.
>
>I still have my username/password for Paul Allen's xkleten, where I would
>run the original version. Thanks for your work in making that available to
>us - too bad it's gone.
>
>I spent lots of hours on Dungeon under RSX-11M, some in the twisty
>little passages all alike.

While I also played Dungeon (and Zork) back in the late 70s,
my favorite MUD was the Plato DnD application.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnd_(1975_video_game)

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#234110

"George Cornelius" <cornelius@decuserve.org.invalid> writes:

> I still have my username/password for Paul Allen's xkleten, where I would
> run the original version. Thanks for your work in making that available to
> us - too bad it's gone.

For those who never got on-line at PDPplanet.com (later known as
Living Computers: Museum+Labs), XKLeTen was Paul's first foray into
retrocomputing with real hardware.  It was an XKL Systems Corporation
Toad-1 System (to give it the full marketing name), an extended KL-10
clone running TOPS-20 v7.1.  It was first featured on a late 1990s
"Web 2.0" site called Paul Allen's Wired World.

(This was, as it happens, how I met Paul Allen, when I sold him that Toad-1.)

Around 2015 or so, we retired the Toad-1 hardware at the museum, moving
all accounts onto a TOAD-2 which Len Bosack donated to the museum in
advance of the grand opening in April 2013.

I believe that all such accounts are still active on the TOAD-2, which
is now part of the collection at the Interim Computer Museum, which has
been discussed before (perhaps in alt.sys.pdp10, perhaps here).

You should check, George.

-- 
Rich Alderson					  news@alderson.users.panix.com
      Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
	  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
									--Galen

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