I was lucky enough to find the initial (or as close as I could get) source. Version: 1.4.1 and commented “–Jim Aspnes, December 9th, 1989″. I eventually managed to get the code compiled again, it wasn’t too bad a job, hampered by the fact I hadn’t been near C for quite some time! After spending some time playing I noted that the accompanying documentation “Three’s Unabridged Dictionary of Commands” (Last Updated Thu May 31 13:37:43 CDT 1990) had commands which the 1.4.1 version didn’t recognise.

More trawling of the Internet… I found the Islandia source, last change comment: “–Michael Mauldin & Russ Smith, June 25, 1990.    1.5.4f”. This (after looking through the code) had the extra commands and a whole lot more “features”, wonderfully #defined in/out. Anyway, tonight I finally got this running, I suspect I need to revisit some of my changes, I whacked GCC up to maximum on the warning levels etc. and I probably perverted some of the logic on the way!

Its a shame, I cannot find the sweet spot of code where it had less adventurous features added, specifically in/around the “1.5.3″ version, ho hum. I guess it might be out there? Anyway, its running and I’m probably one of a small number of people who has seen its output since 1990, so here it is:

TinyMud: Islandia

Now I just need to play with it and see whether I should run the really early version or this. I’m so used to unit tests etc. I’m paranoid something is broken and the later code is really fragile. For now I will just sit with the warm glow of seeing a bit of computing history re-awakened.

The Background

I make this story up each time I tell it to my 6-year old, this is rough and from memory. Feel free to adapt! If you like it then Grandad and the sticky tape might well be published!

The Story

Each year the village held a fete, part of which included a great vegetable competition.

Grandad was always trying to win a prize for his marrows, but they were either too small, too weird or just plain silly.

One evening he was leaving the pub when, “puff”, a stinky cloud of smoke appeared and a strange man stood before him.

The strange man said “I can grant you your wish to win the marrow competition at the fete this year, but whatever you do, you must not eat the marrow!”

Grandad (slightly amazed and dazed), just nodded. The strange man disappeared in another stinky puff of smoke.

The next morning Grandad had completely forgotten about the events of the evening.

As time went by, his marrow grew and grew, amazed Grandad thought nothing of it, soon he needed an even larger greenhouse, eventually even this was not enough to contain the vegetable!

The day of the fete arrived. Grandad enlisted children from the local village to help pull the marrow to the village green, suffice as to say he was very nervous.

He waited in anticipation of the judging, eventually the mayor came out and congratulated him on winning the prize for best marrow. But she needed to ask a favour, the caterers had failed to turn up, so there wasn’t any  food for the celebratory feast. She wondered if they could use his marrow. Grandad agreed…

The marrow was so large they managed to make marrow soup, marrow pie and marrow ice-cream for the whole village! Grandad didn’t eat any as he was feeling too overwhelmed.

The village all went home to sleep…

In the morning Grandad  awoke to the most peaceful of days, all was quite in the village – Too quiet! Where were the children playing in the street?

He went downstairs and knocked on his neighbour’s door, eventually he heard a faint “hello”. He replied and asked why was the village so empty?

His neighbour opened the door. To his surprise their ears and nose were tiny marrows and they had marrow arms and legs!!!

Over the week the people returned to their normal state of existence – Grandad went off marrows.

Had so many problems with setting up the configuration under nginx, thought I would check uploads.