Burroughs B22 game: "Rats Of The Maze"

[Darrell Olsen]

Balthasar,

I have it. I'm unsure who wrote it but considering its age, I don't think
the author would mind me passing it on.

E-Mail me and unless someone has objections, I'll pass you the necessary
files.

Cheers,
Darrell.

"Balthasar v. Weymarn" <b...@DEFEATdorthonionSPAM.de> wrote in message
news:38AF3531...@DEFEATdorthonionSPAM.de...
> Still looking for the Burroughs-system game "Rats Of The Maze". Does
> anyone know anything about it, maybe who programmed it back then?

[si...@simonswain.com]

Hi. I'm interested in tracking down this game. Is this forum still active? Even some screenshots would be great.

Thanks
Simon

[Al Kossow]

On 11/24/15 4:14 AM, si...@simonswain.com wrote:
> Hi. I'm interested in tracking down this game. Is this forum still active? Even some screenshots would be great.
>

There is an active convergent group on yahoo
ct...@yahoogroups.com
and there has recently been work done in the MESS simulator to get the B2x series working
in simulation.
Rats is dependent on the video hardware of the earlier Convergent systems and won't work on the
later PC based BTOS systems.

Screen shots at http://bitsavers.org/pdf/convergent/ngen/screenshots

The group has been looking for the Rats sources for a while, but it hasn't turned up yet.

[Convergent MightyFrame]

Darrel,

Glad to see you posted this within the last year here! I'm restoring a Convergent AWS, so the video dependencies that Al Kossow speaks of below should not be an issue, since I'm using original hardware.

You mention that you have this, and can share the files. Your email address is not found below, so I'll message you here. If you are still willing and available, I would most certainly appreciate the files.

I can be reached at the email address shown on my website contact page here: https://convergentaws.blogspot.com/p/contact.html

Thank you so much!
Best,
AJ

On Tuesday, February 22, 2000 at 2:00:00 AM UTC-6, Darrell Olsen wrote:
> Balthasar,

> I have it. I'm unsure who wrote it but considering its age, I don't think
> the author would mind me passing it on.
> E-Mail me and unless someone has objections, I'll pass you the necessary
> files.

> Cheers,
> Darrell.

[Scott Lurndal]

Convergent MightyFrame <mighty...@gmail.com> writes:
>Darrel,
>
>Glad to see you posted this within the last year here! I'm restoring a Convergent AWS, so the video dependencies that Al Kossow speaks of below should not be an issue, since I'm using original hardware.
>

Um. Darrel posted that in the year 2000. Over twenty years ago.

While I certainly enjoyed playing rats back in the early 1980's,
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a copy of the software
(although I do have a couple of 5.25" BTOS floppies around somewhere,
I don't recall that I ever had a copy of RATS).

[Convergent MightyFrame]

> Um. Darrel posted that in the year 2000. Over twenty years ago.

Scott, yes, of course, you are right. I responded too quickly, and what I I thought I saw was 2020 in the date, of course it was actually 2000. And of course, when I realized this, I couldn't edit my message because it had already been sent. I was a bit embarrassed. But then I thought that if the list were really dead, nobody would see it anyway! So, instead of sending a retraction, I just let it be. But yet, here you are. Good!

> While I certainly enjoyed playing rats back in the early 1980's,
> I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a copy of the software

Yes, of course. For now, Ill put that in my category of "unobtainium-ware", binaries lost to time.

> (although I do have a couple of 5.25" BTOS floppies around somewhere,
> I don't recall that I ever had a copy of RATS).

I think it's very great that you have some 5.25" BTOS floppies. Do you think that your floppies are designed to work on The Burroughs B20 (an "AWS-class" machine), or the B25 or higher (an "NGEN-class" machine)?

The whole reason I spoke up here, is that we just got an AWS machine (pre-NGEN) to boot and install CTOS, for what we think *might* just be the first time anyone has tried to do this in the 21st century. That we know of, anyway.

Compare the the floppies we show/feature on this page https://convergentaws.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-first-floppy-to-finally-boot-our-aws.html

If we could find a B20 compatible version of BTOS Install, we could also install an instance of BTOS on this system. We'd love to demonstrate how that installation process looks, and then do some comparisons between CTOS and BTOS installations and behavior on these older AWS-class machines.

Thanks!

Best always,
AJ

[Scott Lurndal]

Convergent MightyFrame <mighty...@gmail.com> writes:
>> Um. Darrel posted that in the year 2000. Over twenty years ago.=20
>Scott, yes, of course, you are right. I responded too quickly, and what I =
>I thought I saw was 2020 in the date, of course it was actually 2000. And=
> of course, when I realized this, I couldn't edit my message because it had=
> already been sent. I was a bit embarrassed. But then I thought that if t=
>he list were really dead, nobody would see it anyway! So, instead of sendi=

>ng a retraction, I just let it be. But yet, here you are. Good!
>

>> While I certainly enjoyed playing rats back in the early 1980's,=20
>> I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a copy of the software=20
>Yes, of course. For now, Ill put that in my category of "unobtainium-ware"=

>, binaries lost to time.
>

>> (although I do have a couple of 5.25" BTOS floppies around somewhere,=20

>> I don't recall that I ever had a copy of RATS).

>I think it's very great that you have some 5.25" BTOS floppies. Do you thi=
>nk that your floppies are designed to work on The Burroughs B20 (an "AWS-cl=

>ass" machine), or the B25 or higher (an "NGEN-class" machine)?

Hmm.. My guess would be B20; by the time the B25 was out (which we
were using as the maintenance processor for the Burroughs V500
mainframes), I was done with the B20 systems (I later transferred
up to the former Convergent Technologies in San Jose in 89, but I worked on unix
systems up there).

It's possible the floppies were for the V530 maintenance processor (B25),
but they'd likely just have maintenance processor functionality, not rats
or BTOS installation.

I'll see if I can dig them up.

[Eeva Roslynn]

Any progress in the past year?

I played Rats as a kid on my dad's Burroughs and have looked and looked for it online to no avail. I wonder if it's simple enough to just re-code?

Also does anyone remember Chopper?

Thanks to this group for existing, there seems to be relatively little on the web about these games.

Best,
Eeva

[Scott Lurndal]

Eeva Roslynn <eeva.r...@gmail.com> writes:
>Any progress in the past year?

I have a 5 1/4" floppy on my desk labeled 'Rats'.

I'll try to get it up to Al at CHM sometime in the next
few weeks. No guarantees as to the readability or that
the label matches the content.

[Stuart Macpherson]

There's a floppy disk image available at bitsavers.org
http://bitsavers.org/bits/Convergent/ngen/5_apps/
There's also a prebulit vdi virtual machine if want to have a look at BTOS.CTOS
I haven't been able to get rats to run on it though

[Forgotten Machines]

Eeva, Scott, Stuart & all interested,

As part of our restoration of 1982-1983 Convergent Technologies AWS Turbo machines, one of our goals is to get Rats to run on this newly restored physical hardware.

Here's the details and updates on our efforts:
https://youtu.be/zBcgq7-QLIQ

And the complimentary page on our website:
https://convergentaws.blogspot.com/2022/02/finding-and-implementing-rats-of-maze.html

I'm hoping that someone here might have some ideas of what must be done on the AWS hardware to enable this game to run.

But regardless, I'll be sharing updates here if (and when!) we make progress.

Best,
AJ

[Irv Kalb]

I was part of the Convergent Technologies Operating System (CTOS) team. I worked on the Executive (command line program) and wrote the Context Manager. But the game of Rats was one of my favorites and even pre-dates me.

In my spare time, I have started rewriting the game of Rats from scratch using the Python language. I have forgotten many of the details of the original, so I have implemented a number of things to the best of my knowledge.

No guarantees that this will become a real thing, but I've put together a video showing a preview of what I have so far (all place holder art and place holder sounds). For now, it's a fun spare time project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6SjM5-3Kog

If you have any comments or if you remember a lot of details, feel free to get in touch with me directly: Irv at furrypants dot com

(I do know the original author and have tried to contact him, but I haven't been able to reach him.)

Irv

[Forgotten Machines]

Irv, this is amazing, thank you so much for sharing doing this and sharing it with us!

Along these lines, we've recently restored several NGEN systems, which are ALSO known for running the original RATS. And, we have now acquired several sources of the RATS game files, and our hope that at least one file set will actually work!

So of course, one of our first goals is to get it to run, and capture that on video. If we get that to work, perhaps you would be interested in the CTOS files that make up the game? Would you be able to reverse-engineer or decomplie them?

I'll be publishing a video on my channel as soon as we succeed, with as much detail as I can cram in, and sharing it here.

So cool!

Best,
AJ

[Forgotten Machines]

Irv,

Have you considered sharing your Python source code on this? Perhaps on Github.com with a link published in your YouTube video description? That would be really cool!

Thanks for considering it!

Best,
AJ

[Forgotten Machines]

On Saturday, April 2, 2022 at 1:58:38 PM UTC-5, Irv Kalb wrote:

> In my spare time, I have started rewriting the game of Rats from scratch using the Python language. I have forgotten many of the details of the original, so I have implemented a number of things to the best of my knowledge.

Irv, now that we have several real original versions of Rats running on real Convergent Technologies hardware, I'd be happy to record more videos showing you the details that you believe you have forgotten. I'll ask for your direction on this, and see if I can explore those "forgotten areas" of the game under your direction.

Here's the first of many videos showing the resurrected original Rats on resurrected original CT NGEN hardware:
https://youtu.be/CBqMuL_LlP4