Re: The joy of FORTRAN

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:

FORTRAN was even worse, at least in the bad old days.
Porting Adventure and Dungeon from the PDP-11 to
Univac's 360 workalikes was lots of fun.  Not only
were there a lot of DECisms (RAD50 constants, anyone?)
but I had to convert ASCII to EBCDIC (including
decrypting the message file, translating it, and
re-encrypting it).  But I _really_ wanted to play
Dungeon, and I didn't have access to a PDP-11...

trivia: 360s were originally suppose to be ascii machines, but the ASCII
unit record machines weren't ready so they were going to (temporarily)
use BCD gear and EBCDIC. biggest computer goof ever:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM

I used to drop by TYMSHARE and/or see them at monthly meetings hosted at
STANFORD SLAC. They had made their CMS-based online computer
conferencing system available "free" to SHARE in Aug1976 as VMSHARE
archvies:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare

I cut a deal to get monthly tape dump of all VMSHARE (and later PCSHARE)
files to make available on IBM internal network and systems (one
difficulty was lawyers who were concerned that internal employees would
be contaminated exposed to direct/unfiltered customer information.

one visit to TYMSHARE they demo'ed a game (ADVENTURE) that somebody
found on Stanford SAIL PDP10 and ported to CMS. I got full full source
and made it (also) available on on internal network and systems.  I
would send source to anybody that could demonstrate they got all the
points. Relatively shortly, versions with lots more points appear as
well as PLI versions.

Colossal Cave Adventure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure
Adventure Game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_game

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970