pcjs/apps/pcx86/1983/adventmath

layout	title	permalink	machines
page	Adventures in Math (1983)	/apps/pcx86/1983/adventmath/	type id config autoMount pcx86 ibm5150 /devices/pcx86/machine/5150/cga/256kb/machine.xml B path /apps/pcx86/1983/adventmath/ADVENTMATH100.json

Adventures in Math (1983)

{% include machine.html id="ibm5150" %}

This game is available from the Internet Archive. The contents of their ZIP archive contains:

-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 Jeff  staff  18688 Dec 24  1996 Adventur.bas
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 Jeff  staff      0 Dec 24  1996 Adventures in Math (1983).ba1
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 Jeff  staff  54277 Dec 24  1996 Basica.exe
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 Jeff  staff  11904 Dec 24  1996 Castle.bas
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 Jeff  staff   6400 Dec 24  1996 Exit.bas
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 Jeff  staff   4992 Dec 24  1996 Help.bas
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 Jeff  staff   1418 Dec 24  1996 Maze1
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 Jeff  staff   2179 Dec 24  1996 Maze2
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 Jeff  staff   3892 Dec 24  1996 Maze3
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 Jeff  staff  10496 Dec 24  1996 Monocode.000
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 Jeff  staff     15 Dec 24  1996 Run.bat
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 Jeff  staff     13 Dec 24  1996 Sn
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 Jeff  staff    369 Dec 24  1996 Topten

What's a little disturbing about the above archive is that all the files are dated "Dec 24 1996". However, if you dig around a bit more on the Internet Archive, you discover that A Large Collection of DOS Collections contains:

• DOS Collection v0.7/DVD1/Adventures In Math (1983)(Ibm).zip
• main torrent/1983/Adventures in Math (1983)(IBM) [Educational].zip

In the first ZIP file:

-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff  18688 Dec 24  1996 adventur.bas
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff     16 Dec 24  1996 autoexec.bat
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff  54277 Dec 24  1996 basica.exe
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff  11904 Dec 24  1996 castle.bas
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff   4964 Dec 24  1996 command.com
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff   6400 Dec 24  1996 exit.bas
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff   4992 Dec 24  1996 help.bas
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff   1418 Dec 24  1996 maze1
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff   2179 Dec 24  1996 maze2
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff   3892 Dec 24  1996 maze3
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff  10496 Dec 24  1996 monocode.000
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff     13 Dec 24  1996 sn
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff    369 Dec 24  1996 topten

And in the second ZIP file:

-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff  18688 Aug 11  1983 Adventur.bas
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff  54277 Sep 17  1999 Basica.exe
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff  11904 Aug 11  1983 Castle.bas
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff   6400 Aug 11  1983 Exit.bas
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff   4992 Aug 11  1983 Help.bas
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff   1418 Aug 11  1983 Maze1
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff   2179 Aug 11  1983 Maze2
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff   3892 Aug 11  1983 Maze3
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff  10496 Dec 19  1985 Monocode.000
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff     15 Jan  4  2003 Run.bat
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff     13 Aug 11  1983 Sn
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff    369 Sep 17  1999 Topten
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Jeff  staff    170 Jan 22  2011 file_id.diz

I decided to start with the contents of the second ZIP file.

One strange file common to all these archives is MONOCODE.000. Dumping that file reveals:

00000c60  20 4d 4f 4e 4f 50 4f 4c  59 20 69 73 20 61 20 72  | MONOPOLY is a r|
00000c70  65 67 69 73 74 65 72 65  64 20 74 72 61 64 65 6d  |egistered tradem|
00000c80  61 72 6b 20 6f 66 20 50  61 72 6b 65 72 20 42 72  |ark of Parker Br|
00000c90  6f 74 68 65 72 73 2c 20  49 6e 63 2e e8 f7 7d e8  |others, Inc...}.|
00000ca0  a1 64 e8 d4 79 e8 d6 7d  3c 20 20 20 20 20 20 20  |.d..y..}<       |
00000cb0  20 20 20 20 20 20 4d 53  2d 44 4f 53 20 61 64 61  |      MS-DOS ada|
00000cc0  70 74 61 74 69 6f 6e 20  28 43 29 20 31 39 38 35  |ptation (C) 1985|
00000cd0  20 44 6f 6e 20 50 68 69  6c 6c 69 70 20 47 69 62  | Don Phillip Gib|
00000ce0  73 6f 6e 20 5b e8 96 7d  03 35 2e 31 b8 5d 00 50  |son [..}.5.1.].P|

So at some point, unrelated ("MONOPOLY") files were mingled with this game. I deleted the file.

Another unexpected file is BASICA.EXE (54277 bytes) from 1999. It seems unlikely that IBM would have distributed any BASIC binary with this game, because DOS was a prerequisite, and at the time, all versions of DOS included BASIC. IBM's PC-DOS shipped with BASICA.COM, and OEM versions of DOS shipped with either GWBASIC.EXE or BASIC.EXE.

The closest matching binary I'd seen up to this point was BASICA.EXE from COMPAQ DOS 1.12 (54304 bytes). And sure enough, examining the strings contained inside this BASICA.EXE revealed that it is a close relative:

The COMPAQ Personal Computer BASIC
Version 1.13
(C) Copyright COMPAQ Computer Corp. 1983

It's safe to say that IBM would not have distributed a COMPAQ binary; if IBM had distributed any BASIC binary at all, it would have been their own BASICA.COM. Of course, the problem with IBM's BASICA.COM is that it also requires an IBM PC with ROM BASIC installed, which is why someone copied the COMPAQ version of BASIC (it has no ROM dependencies).

Anyway, I've deleted BASICA.EXE. The proper thing to do -- and what any purchaser of this game would have to do -- is boot a machine with an appropriate version of DOS and use the BASIC binary included with DOS to run this game.

Finally, there was FILE_ID.DIZ:

Adventures in Math (1983)(IBM) [Educational].zip
Name:Adventures in Math
Version:1.0
Language/Country:English
Flags:
Year:1983
Publisher:IBM
Genre(s):Educational

and RUN.BAT:

basica castle

and TOPTEN:

The Ultimate One,83519,LARGE,07-15-81
MathsWhiz,78613,LARGE,01-01-80
[z],70946,LARGE,07-13-81
[z],56728,LARGE,04-24-80
[z],56727,LARGE,07-25-81
[z], 56277,LARGE,07-28-81
[z],56157,LARGE,07-24-81
[z],55677,LARGE,07-24-81
[z],55197,LARGE,07-23-81
[z],54792,LARGE,07-23-81
^Z,07-28-81
[z],56157,LARGE,07-24-81
Z[z],55677,LARGE,07-24-81
[z],55197,LARGE,07-23-81

All those files have been deleted as well, leaving 8 files dated "Aug 11 1983". Next, I created a disk image from the directory containing just those files:

diskdump --dir=archive --format=json --output=ADVENTMATH100.json --manifest