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Looking for images of Orbquest and Nemesis CP/M games

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EricN

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Dec 9, 2010, 6:11:18 AM12/9/10
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Does anyone have images of these rare CP/M games they can share? I've
trolled the repositories but I've never seen these games. It would be
good to get these images archived, especially given the rarity of
professional CP/M games.

Thanks,
Eric

ChickenMan

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Dec 12, 2010, 10:06:50 AM12/12/10
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I have found my copy of Nemesis. It fires up with

Nemesis and Dungeon Master
Copyright (c) 1981
Michael Q. Hiller and Michael A. Pagels

I have it running on my Microbee 128 ( a Z80 computer) in CP/M 2.2 or ZCPR2.

Not sure where I can post them to make them available to everyone. I
found a copy of the manual and it describes the files that were on the
original disks as mine is full of all sorts of other files that the kids
produced back in the 80's. Anyhow, I can post them somewhere if there
are any suitable suggestions.

EricN

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Dec 12, 2010, 10:58:04 AM12/12/10
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> I have found my copy of Nemesis. Anyhow, I can post them somewhere if there
> are any suitable suggestions.

That's great to hear. I wonder if the retroarchive would host them:
http://retroarchive.org/

They have a commercial CP/M software repository and you can email the
owner at geneb_at_deltasoft.com.

For the documentation, another person has already posted scanned
images of both Orbquest and Nemesis to his Flickr account here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loguidice/sets/72157622412194282/

Many thanks,
Eric

ChickenMan

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Dec 13, 2010, 6:48:32 AM12/13/10
to

I have made contact with Gene and have forwarded the files to him, so
expect Nemesis on his site soon.

Okay, I have made Nemesis available, so whos got Orbquest ?

Cheers,
Alan

EricN

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Dec 13, 2010, 9:46:43 PM12/13/10
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> I have made contact with Gene and have forwarded the files to him, so
> expect Nemesis on his site soon.
>
> Okay, I have made Nemesis available, so whos got Orbquest ?

You rocketh, thanks! Hopefully Orbquest will show up soon.

Eric

ChickenMan

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Dec 17, 2010, 9:24:42 AM12/17/10
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Gene has it up on his site now, thanks, get it from
http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/games/games.htm

Remember, you must first run TERMDEF to install it for the terminal that
your about to play it on. Enjoy :)

EricN

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Dec 17, 2010, 11:42:37 AM12/17/10
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> Gene has it up on his site now, thanks, get it fromhttp://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/games/games.htm

>
> Remember, you must first run TERMDEF to install it for the terminal that
> your about to play it on.  Enjoy :)

It works like a champ on my Apple ][/Z80 system which is configured as
a Soroc terminal. Thanks again to you both!

madcrow

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Dec 22, 2010, 10:04:48 AM12/22/10
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Speaking of terminals, what all does it support? Is VT-100 (for those
of us who emulate) supported?

EricN

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Jan 2, 2011, 3:21:20 AM1/2/11
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> Speaking of terminals, what all does it support? Is VT-100 (for those
> of us who emulate) supported?

I believe so. Before you start the game, run the program on the disk
called TERMDEF.COM and there is an option for the VT-100 terminal. The
program will let you save your termdefs and then you're good to go.

Eric

ChickenMan

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Jan 2, 2011, 6:35:56 PM1/2/11
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When you run TERMDEF.COM, select 5, then Yes. You are able to select
from these already pre-defined terminals:

Heath H19
Televideo 912, 920
Soroc IQ120
Lear-Siegler ADM-3A
Lear-Siegler ADM-31
Perkins-Elmer Bantam 550
Perkins-Elmer Fox 1100
D.E.C. VT-52 and VT-100
HDS Concept 100
BEEHive 150
Hazeltine 1500
Intertec Superbrain
Processor Technology SOL
Scion Microangelo
Teleray 1061
Hewlett Packard 2621A
Hewlett Packard 2645

and most importantly, you can create a new terminal for any terminal not
listed above by using your Manual and entering the codes required.

Cheers,

niji...@gmail.com

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Feb 11, 2018, 6:31:00 PM2/11/18
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My dad managed to resurrect his copy off of his original floppies back in the day. However, ours seems to have suffered a slight bit of file corruption (not surprising considering the age and expected lifespan of said floppies). However, the game actually still runs (which is surprising).

Level 1 has some discrepancies to the source files, magic via items doesn't always work right and sometimes crashes the game, and the DM program (the level editor) will not produce valid level files, though it can read the existing source files.

I am using 22nice to translate the CP/M COM files to DOS readable files and running the whole thing in DOSBOX... which may or may not have something to do with my 'corruption' issues. ^^

Alan Laughton

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Feb 15, 2018, 5:04:52 AM2/15/18
to
I made a working copy of Nemesis available some years ago, you can get
it from http://www.nostalgia8.org/cpm.htm but unable to locate Orbquest.
Can you make a copy of that available somewhere ? Thanks.
Alan

Udo Munk

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Feb 15, 2018, 5:45:33 AM2/15/18
to
On Thursday, February 15, 2018 at 11:04:52 AM UTC+1, Alan Laughton wrote:

> I made a working copy of Nemesis available some years ago, you can get
> it from http://www.nostalgia8.org/cpm.htm but unable to locate Orbquest.
> Can you make a copy of that available somewhere ? Thanks.

For z80pack there is a working 8" disk image available too, probably taken
from above, file is from 2014, don't know anymore. It also is configured
for ANSI terminals already. Run with a 2-4MHz CPU, with a faster one you
won't play for long ;-)

Alan Laughton

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Feb 15, 2018, 7:52:23 PM2/15/18
to
My copy of Nemesis + manual is also on Gene Buckles site at
http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/games/games.htm

But Orbquest is what is still missing, anybody ? I have the manual as a
quality PDF, just not the software.
Alan

Alan Laughton

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Feb 15, 2018, 7:56:18 PM2/15/18
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Bill Loguidice claims to have a copy, but multiple emails, Twitter, etc
requests have all fallen on deaf ears.
http://www.armchairarcade.com/neo/node/2914?page=1
Alan

Eric N

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Feb 16, 2018, 8:46:56 PM2/16/18
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Really interesting to see this thread resurface after 8 years. I've continued to hunt for Orbquest and have never seen it appear on eBay or even mentioned on another website other than Bill Loguidice's site at about the same time this thread was started. I emailed Bill at the time but never got a response either.

Commercial CP/M games like these look to be very scarce. A couple of years ago I came across four Avalon Hill CP/M games for the Heath/Zenith Z-100 systems: Telengard, Computer Stocks & Bonds, Computer Football Strategy, and B1-Bomber. They're available here in ImageDisk format: http://planemo.org/retro/z-100-gaming-find/

Eric

MichaelP

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Apr 25, 2018, 4:50:57 PM4/25/18
to
Eric, I'm even more amazed.

I'm Michael Pagels, one of the two authors. We had a great time writing this game, and it helped pay for grad school. Of course, we had to change the name of Dungeon Master; something pesky about copyrights! We never got to Nemesis II, but we did write one of the first multi-player games for MP/M or serially linked CP/M machines called StarJump. I never continued in the games business, but I've continued innovating in the computer industry.

Michael

Udo Munk

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Apr 25, 2018, 5:04:45 PM4/25/18
to
Interesting, on the archived disk the name still is Dungeon Master:

Nemesis and Dungeon Master
Copyright (c) 1981
Michael Q. Hiller and Michael A. Pagels

Please hit a key to continue.

You do not have archived StarJump? None of the early multi-user games for MP/M
seem to be available nowadays :(

Eric N

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May 1, 2018, 10:08:00 PM5/1/18
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Well met, Michael P! I have thoroughly enjoyed Nemesis on both an Apple II PCPI CP/M system and a Kaypro. I really liked the real-time component of the game. That was an unexpected surprise when I first played it.

Eric

Lance

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Dec 13, 2019, 11:56:29 PM12/13/19
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For those of you still getting notifications for this thread, OrbQuest has finally been made available.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.os.cpm/xa4nxOkf1cw/bJJpgGRoBQAJ

The only downside is that this copy is the Osborne version which apparently did not come with the SETTERM program to configure the terminal screen control codes. The TERM.CTL file included was probably just pre-configured for Osborne to save space on the disk.

I have successfully altered that TERM.CTL file with a hex editor and made it appear to work properly for Apple II CPM. (I have not played long enough to know if there are any quirks to be worked out.)

All you need to do is modify the first 3 bytes.
Change this "1A 00 CD"
To this "1B 2A 00"

Enjoy.

Alan Laughton

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Dec 14, 2019, 1:07:48 AM12/14/19
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The "1A" is the Clear the Screen code for the ADM 3a terminal, so
working great on my Microbee as is :)
Alan

dxforth

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Dec 14, 2019, 5:45:54 AM12/14/19
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Having trouble extracting the files. Used IMDU to decompress, then
cpmtools and Osborne1 fmt. Is that right? Got a sensible dir list
but corrupt files e.g. COM file full of E5's.

dxforth

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Dec 14, 2019, 6:13:37 AM12/14/19
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So the problem was the wrong Osborne 1 diskdef (there appear to be several!).
The following found on a forum seems to work (thanks LK).

# OSB1 Osborne 1 - SSSD 48 tpi 5.25" - 256 x 10
diskdef osb1
seclen 256
tracks 40
sectrk 10
blocksize 2048
maxdir 64
skew 2
boottrk 3
os 2.2
end

Alan Laughton

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Dec 14, 2019, 7:57:59 AM12/14/19
to
Use the OSB1SSSD option, it extracts the files just fine after
de-compressing the images.
Alan

dxforth

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Dec 15, 2019, 7:23:32 AM12/15/19
to
Hmm. I found I could put anything there and it still worked. Selecting
RAW terminal under MYZ80 shows the program outputs line-feeds to
effect screen clear. That prompted me to look further into TERM.CTL
with the following findings. Use with caution!

TERM.CTL

OFFSET LENGTH FUNCTION

00 6 BYTES * CLEAR SCREEN
06 6 BYTES * CLEAR TO EOL
0C 5 BYTES CURSOR LEAD-IN
11 4 BYTES ? PUTTING ANYTHING HERE OTHER THAN 00H RUINS
DISPLAY - POSSIBLY PART OF CURSOR LEAD-IN
15 8 BYTES ? HIGHLIGHT TEXT
1D 208 BYTES ? KEYPRESS DATA
ED 19 BYTES ? NO APPARENT USE

STRINGS TERMINATE WITH 00H

* NOT CURRENTLY USED BY ORBQUEST

Alan Laughton

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Dec 15, 2019, 9:05:14 AM12/15/19
to
The first 6 bytes are most definitely being used on my system. I replace
the first 1A with 00 and run Orbquest, the screen does not clear, just
starts where the cursor was. Put it back in and now it does clear the
opening screen.

dxforth

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Dec 15, 2019, 11:14:26 AM12/15/19
to
On Monday, December 16, 2019 at 1:05:14 AM UTC+11, Alan Laughton wrote:
> On 15/12/2019 11:23 pm, dxforth wrote:
> > On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 5:07:48 PM UTC+11, Alan Laughton wrote:
> >> On 14/12/2019 3:56 pm, Lance wrote:
> >>> For those of you still getting notifications for this thread, OrbQuest has finally been made available.
> >>>
> >>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.os.cpm/xa4nxOkf1cw/bJJpgGRoBQAJ
> >>>
> >>> The only downside is that this copy is the Osborne version which apparently did not come with the SETTERM program to configure the terminal screen control codes. The TERM.CTL file included was probably just pre-configured for Osborne to save space on the disk.
> >>>
> >>> I have successfully altered that TERM.CTL file with a hex editor and made it appear to work properly for Apple II CPM. (I have not played long enough to know if there are any quirks to be worked out.)
> >>>
> >>> All you need to do is modify the first 3 bytes.
> >>> Change this "1A 00 CD"
> >>> To this "1B 2A 00"
> >>>
> >>> Enjoy.
> >>>
> >>
> >> The "1A" is the Clear the Screen code for the ADM 3a terminal, so
> >> working great on my Microbee as is :)
> >> Alan
> >
> > Hmm. I found I could put anything there and it still worked. Selecting
> > RAW terminal under MYZ80 shows the program outputs line-feeds to
> > effect screen clear. That prompted me to look further into TERM.CTL
> > with the following findings. Use with caution!
> ...
> The first 6 bytes are most definitely being used on my system. I replace
> the first 1A with 00 and run Orbquest, the screen does not clear, just
> starts where the cursor was. Put it back in and now it does clear the
> opening screen.

I can fill the field with 0FFh and still it works. Here's a screen dump
of the program booting under MYZ80 using RAW terminal:

^M^JA>orbquest^M^M^J^[=7 ^[(^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^J^[=
^[(^[=" ^[(- - - - - - - - W e l c o m e t o - - - - - - - - ^[=# ^[( ***

Perhaps the program is running in different modes based on some check of
the system.

dxforth

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Dec 15, 2019, 6:53:28 PM12/15/19
to
On Monday, December 16, 2019 at 3:14:26 AM UTC+11, dxforth wrote:
> ...
> Perhaps the program is running in different modes based on some check of
> the system.

Trying out the CP/M EXECutor emulator I find the game now needs
the clear screen string to be place. The criteria by which the
program uses the string or not remains a mystery.

Eric N

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Dec 18, 2019, 10:16:56 PM12/18/19
to
> Use the OSB1SSSD option, it extracts the files just fine after
> de-compressing the images.
> Alan

This is great news! I've successfully extracted the files here and will check them out on my PCPI Applicard this weekend with Lance's TERM edit. For those who aren't experts at ImageDisk and cpmtools, here are the steps to extract the files:

On a PC (or in DOSBox):
1. IMDU 102789~1.IMD ORB1.RAW /e /b /d
2. Copy ORB1.RAW to where you want to extract the CP/M files.

Using cpmtools:
1. cpmcp -f osb1sssd ORB1.RAW 0:* .

I'll be transferring the individual binary files via serial. Alternatively, you could cpmcp the files to an alternate .dsk format and transfer with another method.

Eric

theshadowknowsw...@gmail.com

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Dec 25, 2019, 4:05:47 PM12/25/19
to
@MichaelP,

Ever give any consideration to creating or (since you said you didn't continue in the game industry) allowing some fans to create a mobile version / homage to the Nemesis and Dungeon Master game?

I would be interested in gathering such a group, if permission could be had.

Eric N

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Dec 31, 2019, 9:32:04 PM12/31/19
to
I tested Orbquest with the Apple II terminal changes on the Applicard and the Z80 Softcard emulator in Virtual ][ and both run the game perfectly. I extracted the files from the original .IMD and put them on my website here: http://planemo.org/retro/downloads/cpm/games/

There is a version for the Osborne terminal and a version for Apple-CPM systems.

Eric

dxforth

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Jan 4, 2020, 10:31:37 PM1/4/20
to
After more poking around here's an updated listing. Questions remain
as to why MYZ80 seems to work when it shouldn't...

TERM.CTL

OFFS VALUE SIZE FUNCTION COMMENT

00 1A 00 CD 67 0B CD 6 CLS CLEAR SCREEN STRING
06 1B 54 00 C1 77 D8 6 CEOL CLEAR TO END OF LINE STRING
0C 1B 3D 00 C5 E5 5 CPOS CURSOR POS LEAD-IN STRING
11 00 5C 1D 3A 4 CPOS CURSOR POS ROW/COL STRING
15 00 02 D6 0D 4 BRITE HIGHLIGHT STRING
19 00 1 XOFFS HORIZONTAL OFFSET
1A 00 1 ORDER 0 = COL FIRST 1 = ROW FIRST
1B 01 1 ???
1C 01 1 1 = ENABLE CLS/CEOL/BRITE

Strings are terminated with 00H

Notes:
- Data from 1D to EB is used by ORBQUEST.
- Data from EC to FF is overwritten and likely junk.





dxforth

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Jan 5, 2020, 9:37:41 AM1/5/20
to
I believe I've sorted out all the details necessary to configure TERM.CTL
and expect this to be the final revision.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Details of configurable items in TERM.CTL - the terminal data file
used by ORBQUEST for CP/M.

Last revised: 2020-01-06

File: TERM.CTL

OFFS VALUE SIZE FUNC COMMENT

00 1A 00 CD 67 0B CD 6 CLS CLEAR SCREEN/HOME CURSOR STRING
06 1B 54 00 C1 77 D8 6 CLEOL CLEAR TO END OF LINE STRING
0C 1B 3D 00 C5 E5 5 CPOS CURSOR POS LEAD-IN STRING
11 00 5C 1D 3A 4 CPOS CURSOR POS BETWEEN ROW/COL STRING
15 00 02 D6 0D 4 CPOS CURSOR POS AFTER STRING
19 00 BYTE HORIZONTAL OFFSET
1A 00 BYTE 0 = ROW FIRST 1 = COL FIRST
1B 01 BYTE (1)
1C 01 BYTE 1 = USE CLS/CLEOL 0 = SIMULATE

4D 20 00 WORD OFFSET ADDED TO ROW/COL

(1) Appears to be unused in Orbquest.

- Strings are terminated with 00H byte
- Data from 1D to EB is used by ORBQUEST
- Data from EC to FF is overwritten by the overlay

The usual disclaimers apply.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Ben

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Apr 19, 2023, 4:32:31 AM4/19/23
to
> 00 1A 00 CD 67 0B CD 6 CLS CLEAR SCREEN/HOME CURSOR STRING
> 06 1B 54 00 C1 77 D8 6 CLEOL CLEAR TO END OF LINE STRING
> 0C 1B 3D 00 C5 E5 5 CPOS CURSOR POS LEAD-IN STRING
> 11 00 5C 1D 3A 4 CPOS CURSOR POS BETWEEN ROW/COL STRING
> 15 00 02 D6 0D 4 CPOS CURSOR POS AFTER STRING
> 19 00 BYTE HORIZONTAL OFFSET
> 1A 00 BYTE 0 = ROW FIRST 1 = COL FIRST
> 1B 01 BYTE (1)
> 1C 01 BYTE 1 = USE CLS/CLEOL 0 = SIMULATE
>
> 4D 20 00 WORD OFFSET ADDED TO ROW/COL
>
> (1) Appears to be unused in Orbquest.
>
> - Strings are terminated with 00H byte
> - Data from 1D to EB is used by ORBQUEST
> - Data from EC to FF is overwritten by the overlay

Hello, Is anyone familiar with VT100 escape codes able to have a go at making the necessary TERM.CTL modifications make it display correctly to a VT-100 terminal? I am trying to get Orbquest working on a homebrew Z80 being accessed over serial from a linux desktop, but not succeeding very much in working out the HEX edits needed.

fridtjof.ma...@gmail.com

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Apr 19, 2023, 8:58:04 AM4/19/23
to
Is your VT100 a VT100, or is it an "ANSI" terminal.Reason is that VT100 has a command that shifts to VT52 mode. ANSI needs to send ascii number for row/column. VT52 just needs a character.

Ben

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Apr 19, 2023, 8:27:11 PM4/19/23
to
> Is your VT100 a VT100, or is it an "ANSI" terminal.Reason is that VT100 has a command that shifts to VT52 mode. ANSI needs to send ascii number for row/column. VT52 just needs a character.
I do not have a physical VT100. Ideally I would like to use minicom running from a standard Ubuntu terminal which communicates with the computer running Orbquest over serial, as that is what I'm already using for other applications. My understanding is that most supposedly "VT100 compatible" terminal emulators (including minicom) may not handle the command that shifts to VT52 mode. So I think ideally we would NOT shift to VT52 mode, OR have multiple versions to try.

Instead of minicom under the standard Ubuntu terminal it may be possible for me to use xterm instead which I believe can handle the VT52 shift, or run it in pure VT52 mode. I also have a hardware terminal emulator which supposedly can handle the shift to VT52 mode that I can fall back on if software termainal emulators aren't doing the trick (https://github.com/dhansel/VersaTerm).

So in the best case there would be 3 versions to try perhaps; a pure VT100, pure TV52, and VT100 that shifts to VT52 when expedient. It might be very educational to see those three side-by-side but beggers can't be choosers :) If just one then I think purely VT100/ANSI will be most likely to work if it's possible to implement in the limited space provided in the TERM.CTL file.

dxforth

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Apr 19, 2023, 10:08:55 PM4/19/23
to
On 20/04/2023 10:27 am, Ben wrote:
>
> If just one then I think purely VT100/ANSI will be most likely to work if it's possible to implement in the limited space provided in the TERM.CTL file.

It would be a rare 1982 application that didn't support VT100. Likely TERM.CTL
already does. It's a matter of locating the terminal driver in Orbquest to find
out how.

Ben

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Apr 19, 2023, 10:25:09 PM4/19/23
to
Hi dxforth. My understanding was that you had worked out the details necessary to configure TERM.CTL (in your message above from Jan 6 2020) but that those are the hex values from the recovered TERM.CTL which are configured for Osbourne1 not VT100. The original SETTERM from Orbquest that has not been recovered would have supported generation of a TERM.CTL for VT100 but attempting to edit manually is where I have found myself stuck and asking for someone with experience to have a look at it. To make Orbquest display properly under VT100 would it not "simply" be a matter of changing those hex values in your post above to VT100 control codes?

dxforth

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Apr 19, 2023, 10:38:03 PM4/19/23
to
On 20/04/2023 12:25 pm, Ben wrote:
>
> To make Orbquest display properly under VT100 would it not "simply" be a matter of changing those hex values in your post above to VT100 control codes?

No because ANSI sends xy coords as ASCII strings - not byte values. Likely
there's a switch in TERM.CTL that informs Orbquest but I couldn't determine
what that was.

Message has been deleted

Ben

unread,
Apr 19, 2023, 11:25:14 PM4/19/23
to
Thanks for the explanation. Then is it possible by editing the TERM.CTL parts you have determined to achieve something VT100 compatible that uses switching to VT52 mode? It should at least then work on VT100 terminals that support VT52 mode, such as my hardware emulator mentioned above and perhaps xterm in linux which I believe supports switching to VT52 mode.

dxforth

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Apr 20, 2023, 12:08:24 AM4/20/23
to
VT52 mode should work but may need to be switched manually.

Wayne Hortensius

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Apr 20, 2023, 12:42:36 AM4/20/23
to
Aha; the values in the odd bytes from 1D to 4B are the characters sent
out for the row values in the cursor positioning string (there are 24 of
them). The values in the odd bytes from 4D to EB are the characters
sent out for the column values in the cursor positioning string (there
are 9- of them). Despite being zero separated, they aren't strings; the
program won't accept two character strings so you can't just replace the
characters with two digit strings for the rows and columns beyond 9 (I
tried). The program expects a single character followed by a zero for
each row & column position.

Wayne Hortensius

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Apr 20, 2023, 12:44:53 AM4/20/23
to

> The values in the odd bytes from 4D to EB are the characters
> sent out for the column values in the cursor positioning string (there
> are 9- of them).

That should have been "there are 80 of them", of course!

Udo Munk

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Apr 20, 2023, 1:09:22 AM4/20/23
to
Ben schrieb am Donnerstag, 20. April 2023 um 02:27:11 UTC+2:
> So in the best case there would be 3 versions to try perhaps; a pure VT100, pure TV52, and VT100 that shifts to VT52 when expedient. It might be very educational to see those three side-by-side but beggers can't be choosers :) If just one then I think purely VT100/ANSI will be most likely to work if it's possible to implement in the limited space provided in the TERM.CTL file.

In such cases where a program cannot be patched to ANSI/VT-100 I patch it for VT-52 and this
is my VT-52 terminal then:

cat ~/bin/vt52
#!/bin/sh

LC_ALL=C exec xterm -ti vt52 -tn vt52 -T "DEC VT-52" &

Also I like an old style green terminal which you get with:

cat ~/.Xdefaults
XTerm*Background: black
XTerm*Foreground: green
XTerm*font: 7x13

Wayne Hortensius

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Apr 20, 2023, 2:07:24 AM4/20/23
to
Got it. They weren't zero terminated 1 character strings. They were "up
to 2 characters, possibly terminated earlier by a zero" strings. I have
a TERM.CTL that works with an ANSI terminal and it's HEX version
is included below. Save the lines beginning with : below to TERM.HEX,
use LOAD to create TERM.COM and rename it to TERM.CTL. Fingers crossed
that the Intel hex makes it through.

:100100001B5B481B5B4A1B5B4B0000001B5B00003A
:10011000003B0000004800000000000101303130C9
:1001200032303330343035303630373038303931A2
:10013000303131313231333134313531363137319B
:100140003831393230323132323233323430313088
:100150003230333034303530363037303830393172
:10016000303131313231333134313531363137316B
:100170003831393230323132323233323432353250
:100180003632373238323933303331333233333336
:10019000343335333633373338333934303431341C
:1001A0003234333434343534363437343834393502
:1001B00030353135323533353435353536353735FB
:1001C00038353936303631363236333634363536E0
:1001D00036363736383639373037313732373337C6
:1001E000343735373637373738373938300C00172A
:1001F00000CDE116032AA101E5CDBF263E0132C3A1
:0000000000

dxforth

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Apr 20, 2023, 3:04:05 AM4/20/23
to
On 20/04/2023 4:07 pm, Wayne Hortensius wrote:
> Got it. They weren't zero terminated 1 character strings. They were "up
> to 2 characters, possibly terminated earlier by a zero" strings. I have
> a TERM.CTL that works with an ANSI terminal and it's HEX version
> is included below. Save the lines beginning with : below to TERM.HEX,
> use LOAD to create TERM.COM and rename it to TERM.CTL. Fingers crossed
> that the Intel hex makes it through.

So SETTERM builds the row/col data for Orbquest to use rather than
generating it at run-time. Nice work spotting it!

Ben

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Apr 22, 2023, 1:38:40 AM4/22/23
to
Thanks Wayne, this appears to be working brilliantly, completely playable (as far as this game can be considered so) in my case through minicom and on the Versaterm VT100 hardware emulator. You have restored my faith in the internet, or least in an internet where CP/M is the prevailing OS :)

dxforth

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Apr 23, 2023, 12:03:46 AM4/23/23
to
On 20/04/2023 4:07 pm, Wayne Hortensius wrote:
> Got it. They weren't zero terminated 1 character strings. They were "up
> to 2 characters, possibly terminated earlier by a zero" strings. I have
> a TERM.CTL that works with an ANSI terminal and it's HEX version
> is included below. Save the lines beginning with : below to TERM.HEX,
> use LOAD to create TERM.COM and rename it to TERM.CTL. Fingers crossed
> that the Intel hex makes it through.
> ...

I've put together an installer based on the latest info. It's named
TERMSET to not confuse with the original SETTERM.COM should the latter
ever be located. Usage is:

TERMSET [TERM[.CTL]]

Included are the TERM.CTL and Wayne's ANSI version.

There are two values/flags in TERM.CTL whose purpose is as yet unknown
(assuming they're used at all). The installer identifies them as 0x19
and 0x1B.

Current version is: TRMSET10.ZIP

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kh2WcPUc3hQpLcz7TQ-YQiowrozvxfGw

Any updates will be posted there.

Alex Trusty

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May 4, 2023, 3:15:42 PM5/4/23
to
Hello everyone!
Well done dxf, Wayne et al. You solved the major part of the quest ;)
Btw, could you share TERM.CTL configured just for VT-52? Coz I got no clue :))

dxforth

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May 4, 2023, 11:45:57 PM5/4/23
to
On 5/05/2023 5:15 am, Alex Trusty wrote:
> ...
> Btw, could you share TERM.CTL configured just for VT-52? Coz I got no clue :))

I've checked it on something that claims to be VT-52 emulation. Seems to work.

CLEAR SCREEN: <ESC> H <ESC> J
CLEAR TO EOL: <ESC> K
CURSOR LEAD-IN: <ESC> Y
BETWEEN row/col: <none>
AFTER row/col: <none>
Column first: N
Binary: Y
ROW offset: 32
COL offset: 32
Use CLS/CLREOL: Y
Value at 0x19 (0): 0
Value at 0x1B (1): 1

:100100001B481B4A00001B4B000000001B5900004D
:10011000000000000000000000000001012000219C
:1001200000220023002400250026002700280029A3
:10013000002A002B002C002D002E002F0030003153
:100140000032003300340035003600370020002133
:100150000022002300240025002600270028002973
:10016000002A002B002C002D002E002F0030003123
:1001700000320033003400350036003700380039D3
:10018000003A003B003C003D003E003F0040004183
:100190000042004300440045004600470048004933
:1001A000004A004B004C004D004E004F00500051E3
:1001B0000052005300540055005600570058005993
:1001C000005A005B005C005D005E005F0060006143
:1001D00000620063006400650066006700680069F3
:1001E000006A006B006C006D006E006F000ABE09B3
:1001F000290F110FCF088902E898DF3724E836DE8F
:00000001FF

Alex Trusty

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May 5, 2023, 5:36:18 AM5/5/23
to
Works just fine. Thank you so much, dxf!
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