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Author Archives: Quentin
Essex BCPL pre-requisites
Having restored the BCPL tape, before you can properly install BCPL you must undertake some pre-requisite work. Fortunately the pre-requisites are stated in the BUILD.CTL file that ships on the tape and boil down to three things: Check the code … Continue reading
Essex BCPL restore
Now that I have a working TOPS-10 environment, in order to truly start the journey to MUD the first step is to install the Essex university BCPL compiler from the 1970’s. This compiler was lost for many years, and even … Continue reading
Back to the future
As I get older, I have been reminiscing on the good old days of computing when 32K of memory was amazing and programs came on punch cards. So, in a bid to re-live my youth I have been creating old … Continue reading
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May the Fortran be with you.
If you have your own Tops-10 system up and running you might want to do something useful with it. So, the first step for me was to install the Fortran and BASIC programming languages, partly to prove they would work … Continue reading
Configuring PDP10 Tops-10 for online use
I installed my very own PDP10 Tops-10 system up and running on simh, but to make it work like a 1970’s timesharing system I needed to configure it to support remote users on “teletypes” attached to the system. Of course, … Continue reading
Building a Dec PDP10 using simh
The Dec PDP10 is a large mini/mainframe computer from the 1970’s. For me the most famous aspect of the PDP10 is that it was the original computer upon which Colossal Cave Adventure, Dungeon (aka Zork) and the original MUD were … Continue reading
Stuck in the MUD
MUD was the first game that I played that combined multi-user with a Colossal Cave Adventure style narrative and gave every user a character in the story. Today it remains one of the “greats” as a first of its kind, … Continue reading
Star Trekkin’ across the universe
Many years ago I used to be a computer nerd and really enjoyed just writing programs on the at the local computer centre on a HP2000 Access computer system. The language was BASIC but this was a 32 user computer … Continue reading
Building an HP2000/Access system from scratch
If you are interested in revisiting the great computer systems of the 1970s, then there is nowhere easier to start than with the HP2000/Access system, a system that was used by many schools and universities around the world from 1969 … Continue reading
Drone’s eye view
As well as travelling around the world periodically, I also like to take pictures and make videos. I am, admittedly, not very good at this. Still those images I do make I feel the urge to share. It is in … Continue reading
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