Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/08/16/19:19:53
In article <5sdbe3$8tt$1 AT vnetnews DOT value DOT net>, mschulter AT DOT value DOT net (M. Schulter) writes:
> Jamie Love (jamie DOT love AT clear DOT net DOT nz) wrote:
>
> : I would suggest myself, a remake of a game called starwar (or starwars)
> : that the first hackers programmed on a PDP-10 (i think, or something like
> : that anyway) in the 70's This game was one where you have the screen, and
> : two ships on the screen, these two ships were controlled by the two players
> : who tried, using a limited amout of missiles, to shoot each other.
>
> Hi, there.
>
> Based on my recollection of _Hackers_ by Steven Levy, I would say that the
> name of the game, developed in the early 1960's, was "Space Wars" -- the
> movie _Star Wars_ not being released until 1977, well into the UNIX era
> that is taken to begin on January 1, 1970. Also, since UNIX was originally
> developed on a PDP-11, if I recall correctly, Space Wars was originally
> developed on an earlier model, maybe PDP-6 or so.
Spacewar was developed on the Digital Equipment PDP-1. Their first computer
was released in 1960. I don't recall how many months after that Spacewar came
out. There *was* a version that ran on the GT40 intelligent display, and I
think there was one that ran on the LSI-11 boards you could stuff into certain
VT100 models, but those were *much* later. Unix wasn't even thought of, I
believe, when Spacewar was first run.
The PDP-6 was an entirely different beast -- an entirely different processor
family than the '11, with 36-bit-wide memory (*not* counting parity). Its
descendants were the PDP-10 in its many variants.
--
Mark H. Wood, Lead Systems Programmer +1 317 274 0749 [@disclaimer@]
MWOOD AT INDYVAX DOT IUPUI DOT EDU Finger for more information.
Thank goodness we've left behind the bad old days, before computers were
transformed from reliable business machines into performance art.
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