The Challenge

Like a lot of folks into vintage computing, I started with computer in my teens in the early 80's.  Because of that, I've worked with a lot of microcomputers, but never anything bigger.  As I've gotten back into these old computers, I've also been interested in playing with some of these larger computers that were never part of my personal history but played an important part in the history of computers.

So for my Retrochallenge 2015/07, I plan to write a game in Fortran on a PDP-8.

Why a PDP-8?

As I mentioned, I don't really have any experience with minicomputers or larger, but I read a lot of computer history, and the PDP line obviously plays a significant role.  The PDP-7, for example, was the machine that Unix was written on, and the PDP-11 was where C was first developed.  Altair BASIC was written using an emulator that Paul Allen wrote on a PDP-10.  There are obviously many other mini/mainframe computers that have had their role to play in the development of computers, but with this year being the 50th anniversary of the PDP-8, these DEC machines have obviously gotten a lot of attention recently.  And I got to see several PDP-8's at VCF Southeast, which is the closest I've gotten to any minicomputer, so that was cool too.

As should be obvious from the above paragraph, I don't actually own a PDP-8, so I'll be using the simh emulator.

Why Fortran?

As both a professional and a hobbyist programmer, I know a lot of languages, but because of my microcomputer focus, I've never worked with any of the older languages like COBOL, Fortran, or Algol.  And I wanted to try out something new - or rather, something old...

I picked Fortran because it comes with the OS/8 operating system that I'll be using on the PDP-8.  This means it's already installed and the OS/8 handbook includes chapters on it, so I'll have documentation to go from.  Of course, there were other choices, such as BASIC or assembly language, but I already know BASIC.  And while I don't know PDP-8 assembly, I do know enough for other platforms that I really didn't feel like learning any version of assembly right now.  So Fortran it is!

What game?

Well, I haven't really decided yet, but obviously it won't be graphical! :)  This actually suits me because I never was a big computer gamer anyway.  Well, to be more precise, I'm one of the few programmers who doesn't actually want to write games.  My programming interests have always leaned more towards other areas.  But I do recall having fun with some text-based games in the old days, so I figured I'd have a go at doing one for the PDP-8.  I don't know what game I'll be doing yet, but a game of some sort is the plan.

The challenge

So that's my retrochallenge for July: To write a text-based game in Fortran that runs on a PDP-8 emulator - and hopefully the real thing if I ever get lucky enough to test it out.