I was sitting around being nostalgic, thinking back to my earliest computer gaming experience. It came as a shock when I realized I've been computer gaming since 1974. That was my freshman year in high school. I remember the math lab had a teletype machine that was connected to some mainframe off campus. You were supposed to use it to learn BASIC and had to sign up for blocks of time (there was a waiting list) but we used it to play Star Trek, which played out on a long roll of graph paper, in an 8x8 grid. I remember being incredibly fascinated and addicted. Man, have we come far. And man, have I grown old. LOL.

I've said this before, but we used to rent terminals for $6 an hour at the Lawrence Hall of Science (Berkeley, CA) and play Trek and other games of that era. It was nice having the roll of paper, as we would take it home and relive the experience. I was only in elementary school, so I'm not quite as aged. :)

Now, I have a version of the same game on my PalmPilot, and it plays a lot faster.

I remember doing work experience in 1982 back when I was still in school. I was doing work on a mainframe at a local company and I remember all the mainframe "doodz" used to play a golf game on the mainframe using green computer terminals and punchcards. They thought it was great.

I didn't have the heart to tell them that I was already on my 2nd home computer by '82 and playing far more advanced games than their golf program.

Those mainframe guys were really behind the times back then. :)

Ahhhh, yes.

I remember learning to program on teletypes and punch cards...

I'll just huddle in my cube and work on [UNANNOUNCED], and feel old.

--Dave

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Now, I have a version of the same game on my PalmPilot, and it plays a lot faster.

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I think this is it, Star Battle. I've had my copy for a while (Hint: it was one of the first games I installed on my Palm Professional): http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Chamber/3250/

Thanks; I'll check it out. Offhand, do you know whether it will run under Palm OS 3.x?

I remember programing a version of Trek for my Vic20. The code I had was a whole 1k bigger that what I have available so I spent weeks trying to make that game fit and run. I ended up cutting a few options, making the galaxy half the size, used every short hand basic command available in the box, and a tiny bit of assembler to store values since that took up less space than a full variable. That was my entire career as an elite hacker. :)

My favorite game of the old text Star Trek era was "Trek-80", which ran on the Processor Technology Sol-20. (I had no hope of actually owning a Sol-20, given what it cost, so I played Trek-80 in the store a lot. :-) Trek-80 was a real-time game, very slick for the times. I liked it so much I got hold of a disassembly dump of the code a few years later and ported it to the original 8K Commodore PET, using nothing but a machine language monitor. I also did the same with 'TARGET'.

I must have been insane in those days. ;-)

Holy cow. Just now I did a web search and discovered that somebody's written an emulator for the Sol-20. You can check it out here.

"Offhand, do you know whether it will run under Palm OS 3.x?"

Sorry, I don't know, as I am still running it on my Palm Professional. I need a new cell phone, too, so I wish the combined Palm/phones would come down in price already.

It seems to run on my IIIx.

I also checked out Trek-80 on that Sol-20 emulator. It looked pretty good, though the game pales in comparison to modern fare.