zork-1989-01

Zork binary files, 1989 January

This repository contains the binary files for a January 1989 version of Zork, an interactive fiction game created at MIT by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling. The files are a part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tapes of Tech Square (ToTS) collection at the MIT Libraries Department of Distinctive Collections (DDC).

File organization and details

zork

The files within this directory are the Zork specific files from the 2841.tap tape image file within the /tots/recovered/vol3 directory of the ToTS collection. Most files are written in the MDL programming language and were originally created on a PDP-10 timeshare computer running the ITS operating system.

The files were extracted from the tape image using the itstar program. The filenames have been adapted to Unix conventions, as per the itstar translation. The original filename syntax would be formatted like, CSTACY; MADADV HELP, for example. All files have been placed into this artificial zork directory for organizational purposes.

The cstacy directory contains the copies of files for the ITS version of the game. Presumably copied by user CSTACY in 1989.

codemeta.json

This file is metadata about the Zork files, using the CodeMeta Project schema.

LICENSE.md

This file describes the details about the rights to these files. See Rights for additional information.

README.md

This file is the readme detailing the content and context for this repository.

tree.txt

A file tree listing the files in the zork directory showing the original file timestamps as extracted from the tape image.

Preferred Citation

[filename], Zork binary files, 1989 January, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tapes of Tech Square (ToTS) collection, MC-0741. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Distinctive Collections, Cambridge, Massachusetts. swh:1:dir:bc359495b6856ca418aae7a95a817b3b8d9f1c60

Rights

To the extent that MIT holds rights in these files, they are released under the terms of the MIT No Attribution License. See the LICENSE.md file for more information. Any questions about permissions should be directed to permissions-lib@mit.edu

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Lars Brinkhoff for help with identifying these files and with extracting them using the itstar program mentioned above.