Post #1507421

2026-03-17 11:44 UTC

This one might be interesting to anyone interested in computer gaming history. https://dec10.uknet.net I spent the last couple of weeks finally finishing a project I started for Bletchley Park about 20 years ago. Recreating the original MUD and MIST on a mirror of the original Essex University system that finally closed in 1991. Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle wrote the first online multi-user game (MUD) on Essex University's DECSystem-10 in 1978 and it ran till I closed it in 1991. I diligently backed everything up so I could potentially recover it one day, but as far as I can see, all the DECSystem-10's went to the great scrapyard in the sky, my backups were mostly stolen when my first museum was stolen, and I had huge issues recovering the Essex BCPL compiler to compile what I had left when I finally got a decent TOPS-10 emulator running on a VAX for Bletchley Park. One good thing about being an unemployable whistleblower is free time, so I finally hunkered down to some 90 hour weeks and built a software replica of the Essex system I think reflects it well. It's running on a KS10 not a KL10 but I had to let some things slip. I put the latest known versions of MUD and MIST on it, and miraculously found ROCK too. So, to meander to the point, if you want to see and relive exactly what online multi user gaming was like from 1978 to 1991, you can go to: https://dec10.uknet.net Or: telnet telnet.dec10.uknet.net (Port 2653 is available for ISPs that block 23) And then follow the terse instructions from there. In those days, you were generally faced with a "." prompt and left mostly alone, so for authenticity, I will leave it at that. I should note that although they were, in their day, wildly popular games with a relatively huge community, this is a museum peice in snapshot-form at the moment. But I will leave them up and running to see what happens and as a useful reference. I wasn't going to, but Richard seemed happy to have MUD running, and former MIST players wanted it back, so... Pop this a share if you know folks who might be interested. ** Update: New web client that works better. ** Another update - I added a telnet client. Historically, the telnet connection is much more true to the traditional experience, where you were connecting to a working machine that didn't care about the MUD Guests, so there were no pointers at all. Just rumour and hearsay :) If any of you Unix/Security people notice I messed up something, please tell me. I left "^], !sh" open on the telnet link for about 2 minutes and nearly had a heart-attack once I spotted it :D #history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering #Linux #Security (don't try this on a phone!)

Replies (10)

@cstross@wandering.shop 2026-03-17 12:06

@lorry@infosec.exchange What port/protocol? ssh, telnet, rlogin, or is there a web interface for us noobs? (I only used Essex MUD once—in 1986!)

Open ##1507420
@AbramKedge@beige.party 2026-03-17 12:18

@lorry When I was 15 I was in the first ever Computer Studies O level class at my school. The practical sessions involved sending programs we had punched onto paper tape to the mainframe in Chelmsford over a telephone with acoustic couplers strapped to the handset. The only thing I know about the mainframe was that it had 36bit wide memory - could it have been the same computer that MUD was originally developed on?

Open ##1649516
@mayhem@social.tchncs.de 2026-03-17 12:25

@lorry The pig got me 😂

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@ricci@discuss.systems 2026-03-17 12:49

@lorry cc @aaronareed

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@macf00bar@hachyderm.io 2026-03-17 13:05

@lorry Auge @leyrer

Open ##1649521
@lproven@social.vivaldi.net 2026-03-17 13:08

@lorry > my backups were mostly stolen when my first museum was stolen I think this merits considerable expansion... (!)

Open ##1649522
@larsbrinkhoff@mastodon.sdf.org 2026-03-17 13:16

@lorry Are you aware that Quentin got Essex BCPL and MUD running under TOPS-10? https://www.quentin.org.uk/tag/pdp10/

Open ##1649533
@gulfie@mastodonapp.uk 2026-03-17 13:32

@lorry love that this has been done. It inspired me to build a poor imitation at Coventry Polytechnic in 1985 we christened “Fantarzuk” and I still have the source code sitting around today somewhere, just none of the data files it ran from. #HertonThePlacid #Goodgulf #coventryPolytechnic #Fantarzuk

Open ##1649540
@lorry@infosec.exchange 2026-03-17 14:20

This is a weblog post I wrote over a decade ago about the last time I tried to do this: https://superhighwayman.com/2012/primary-source-not-found/ It gets there in the second half :D The sad thing about reading that, which I wrote in 2012, is that so many of the Primary Sources I can think of for a lot of this stuff are dead now; so it's still all being lost every day. I have done some interviews, so as I discovered a few weeks ago, some of that is preserved on Wikipedia (someone had posted a photo/article I had no idea existed) - But I have a Wiki page and deliberately force myself to do some interviews these days - most people don't. #RetroComputing #Wikipedia #History

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@lorry@infosec.exchange 2026-03-17 17:17

Oh that was a #debug win anyway - I hadn't given the games enough privileges to reset themselves. Mind you, who needs a reset game, they are boring!

Open ##4331918