The MERITSS system (a CDC 6400 administered by MECC for the University of Minnesota and some of the outstateĬolleges) offered a much more diverse array of programming languages (Fortran, LISP, Snobol, Cobol, Pascal, Algol, COMPASS, etc). Minnesota Educational Research and Instruction Time Sharing System).
The following year (1976-ish) I was introduced to a mind blowingly amazing new computer system called MERITSS (the And as side-splittingly hilarious as that turned out to be, my "Celcius toĬentrigrade" converter was an even bigger hoot With the program spiraling off into an unbreakable infinite loop printing out "WRONG! HAHAHAHAH!!!" over and over. And of course there was no right answer, so the "game" always ended I remember my first one clearly - it simply asked you to pick a number, 1 or 2. And naturally all of that tinkering around eventually led me into writing my own games from Somebody else's game, figure out how it worked, make some changes to it and call it your own.
Even if source code were available you'd need to be both a rocket surgeon and world class graphic artist to do anything with it. I mean, given the extreme sophistication of today's video games, I just don't see kids being able to get started And in that regard I kind ofįeel sorry for kids today. Consequently, it wasn't long before myĬuriousity got the best of me and I started sneaking peeks behind the curtain to see what made these things tick. Started spending every spare moment parked in front of that teletype in the library.īeing educational systems, all of the programs on the TIES computers were written in Basic and all of the source code was freely available. And yeah, once I discovered all of this I Suffice it to say, if you were in school in the Twin Cities in the 70's there's no way you didn't run into these ubiquities.
Lunar Lander, Civil War and the like (aka "OREGON", "LUNAR" and "CIVIL" in the abbreviated and all-caps world of mainframeĬomputing). The primary means of access, these systems provided such early educational gaming staples as Oregon Trail,
TIES operated a couple of HP 2000 series computers that the kids in my junior high were allowed to play around on in the library before and after school. Their facilities in Lauderdale, MECC started out by coordinating all educational computing activity in the state and eventually went on to make timeshare mainframeĪccess available to virtually every kid in Minnesota.
Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (aka "MECC", which The success of TIES became evident, the entire effort was expanded statewide in 1974 with the formation of the It all started in 1968 when TIES (Total Information for Educational Systems) was formed to provide timeshare computer access to Twin Cities area public schools. With some very forward-thinking educators and Minnesota public schools were able to provide more computer access to their students than any other school system in the world. The major computer and tech companies that had headquarters and/or huge facilities there (Control Data, Univac, Honeywell, IBM, Cray, et al). Y'see, back in the 50's, 60's and 70's, the Mpls-St Paul area (where I grew up) was basically Regard I had no idea just how fortunate I was. Like you have today, so it wasn't until a couple of years later when I reached junior high that I finally had regular access to a computer. You didn't have one sitting on every desk (or tucked away in every front pocket) Guarded by robed acolytes, and generally shrouded in mystery and arcane ritual. Of course, back in those days computers were these remote, unreachable things hidden away in temples, jealously It's hard to describe (letĪlone explain) the excitement I felt when he dialed up a computer on the telephone, placed the receiver into the terminal's coupler, and then started clackingĪlong playing tic-tac-toe at 11 characters per second, but in that instant my entire life was transformed Was a programmer at Univac and he had allowed Erik to bring in one of Univac's suitcase teletypes (affectionately known as "ticky tack") for us to check out. I can pinpoint the exact moment when my passion for computer gaming was kindled - it was 1973 and I was at a cub scout meeting with my friend Erik Oredson. (NOTE - if you want to know where you can still play these games, skip the history lesson and jump to the bottom) Muinet Entertainment BBS The Ongoing Saga of The Realm of Angmar, Elfhelm's Bane, Swords of Chaos, Lords of Cyberspace, Galactic Conquest &