8.9 KiB
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| page | Adventures in Math (1983) | /apps/pcx86/1983/adventmath/ |
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Adventures in Math (1983)
{% include machine.html id="ibm5150" %}
The files for this game were obtained from the Internet Archive. The contents of their ZIP archive contained:
-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
It was unfortunate that the archive did not contain a complete dump of the original "Adventures in Math" diskette, and that all the files in the archive were dated "Dec 24 1996", calling into question the authenticity of the files.
After digging around a bit more on the Internet Archive, I discovered that A Large Collection of DOS Collections contained:
- 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, since the timestamps of most of the files appeared to be legitimate.
One strange file common to all the archives was MONOCODE.000. Dumping that file revealed:
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 MONOCODE.000.
Another unexpected file was 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, dumping the strings inside this BASICA.EXE revealed that it was 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 some people would have preferred the COMPAQ binary: it had no ROM dependencies. Anyway, I deleted BASICA.EXE.
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 were deleted as well, leaving 8 files dated "Aug 11 1983". Next, I used the PCjs DiskDump utility to create a disk image from a directory ("archive/disk") containing those files:
diskdump --dir=archive/disk --format=json --output=ADVENTMATH100.json --manifest
Here's a directory listing of the resulting 160Kb disk image:
Volume in drive A is PCJS ORG
Directory of A:\
ADVENTUR BAS 18688 8-11-83 12:00p
CASTLE BAS 11904 8-11-83 12:00p
EXIT BAS 6400 8-11-83 12:00p
HELP BAS 4992 8-11-83 12:00p
MAZE1 1418 8-11-83 12:00p
MAZE2 2179 8-11-83 12:00p
MAZE3 3892 8-11-83 12:00p
SN 13 8-11-83 12:00p
8 File(s) 108544 bytes free
This disk has now been added to the PCjs IBM PC Disk Library as "Adventures in Math (1983)".
To run the game, I originally selected an IBM PC (Model 5150, 64Kb) with Color Display, which boots PC-DOS 2.00 by default. However, in the course of starting the game, it crashed:
It appeared to run fine with 256Kb of RAM, but these were IBM's "System Requirements" for the game:
IBM Color Display, or a television
64Kb of memory for PC and PC XT, 128KB for PCjr
One diskette drive
so I reconfigured the machine to boot PC-DOS 1.00, which requires less RAM than PC-DOS 2.00, and that worked. Note that the game was released in October 1983, well after the March 1983 release of PC-DOS 2.00, so it should have been tested with PC-DOS 2.00 on a 64Kb machine, but perhaps it wasn't.
The machine on this page is configured with the following "autoType" sequence:
autoType: 8-10-81\\rb:\\ra:basica castle\\r
which translates to:
8-10-81 [enter an arbitrary date]
b: [switch to drive B:]
a:basica castle [run BASICA on drive A: and load CASTLE.BAS on drive B:]
This is one of the preferred methods of demonstrating software in PCjs: loading unmodified disk images into machines that match the software's system requirements as closely as possible, powering the machine, and then automatically executing a series of commands that an owner of that hardware and software combination would have likely executed.
The other preferred method is to use a machine state file, which restores the machine to a state where the software is already running. This is the fastest approach, and it is useful when the software has an involved installation process, but it takes more effort to set up. The VisiCalc (1981) demo operates this way, but it does so purely for convenience (and because it predates the "autoType" feature).