I'm expanding my research on the early days of TradeWars games, and I'm having a hard time tracking down some important versions. Despite being in touch with Sherrick, Morris, Omega Man, and of course Gary Martin, I can't get my hands on any distributions or code that aren't already widely available on the net. People just don't keep this stuff around (which is a big reason why I'm doing this).

I'm hoping that there are some gameops out there who, like me, don't delete anything. If anyone has some archives out there with any old files related to TradeWars, I'm interested in hearing about it.

In particular, I'm looking for

1) Any early BASIC code listings for the original Tradewars or Tradewars 2, TW 200 or TW 500. What I have is the BASIC code for TW 200,500,Teams which can be found on the net. What I really want is TW 1, the first release of TW 2, and Morris' first release, TW 200, so I can compare and see what features were added when. Sherrick and Morris didn't seem to be big fans of listing changes, so all of the details of this early work are completely lost. Even Sherrick and Morris themselves are vague on their memories of it.

2) Martin's TW 2001 archive. I know there is a code distribution out there. That's useless. I need the actual install distribution. Gary's looking for one, but no luck so far.

3) That's as far as I've gotten. I don't know how easy it'll be to find TW 2002 v1 distributions, or some of the other major forks of the game. I'm covered on TW 2002 v2. If anyone has TW 2002 v1 distributions, let me know. Or anything else from the early days that might be rare. Especially 3rd party apps not found easily on the net.

Thanks!

Got a bunch of junk, don't know if any of it is what you are looking for. Do you have an FTP site I can upload it to?

Wayne

I was able to find: Release WideBeta 5 02-13-94 (2002V2B5.ZIP), et al.

I'll have more time to hunt for others a little later on.

@LoneStar: I doubt if you'll find something I haven't found on the net (though it is possible). I've spent a LOT of time scouring the web for resources. What I need is access to people's private collections, because I'm sure there are some gems hidden out there.

@MadHatter: I'll see what I can do about setting up an FTP for this.

Ok, I created an FTP area for uploading files. The connection details are:

FTP Username: upload@classictw.com
Password: upload
FTP Server: ftp.classictw.com
FTP Server Port: 21

Please create a directory for your files before uploading so I can keep things organized. And let me know if you upload something so I know to look. Thanks!

At the bottom of every post is the ability to attach a file. Why can't people just attach stuff here?

John, another place you might be able to find the files you are looking for would be on some of the old BBS's that are still around. Some of them have extensive download areas with lots of old DOS stuff. Here's a couple of BBS lists you may want to check out:
http://www.bbsfinder.com/listing.asp
http://www.synchro.net/sbbslist.html

It would probably be easist to do a mass email to any addresses on the list. Perhaps ask the sysops if they can post a message to their users. Good Luck!

@Singularity: Sure, that would be great. The ftp it there for anyone with a large number of files (which would be great!). But if you have a file or two, post it here, or email it to me.

@Scrat: An interesting idea. I'm not sure I want to spam anyone (other than TW people ;) ), but it might be a good idea to tap some BBS groups like the ones on facebook. Thanks.

Followup: Scrat, I just checked out those links. Nice ;) I could probably spend hours scouring those for old files, but I enjoy that kind of thing. It's also good to have lists of active BBSs like this so I can start to match them to my Museum list and update their activity dates and add a telnet address so they'll show up in an "active game sites" list. So I appreciate the help. Thanks!

Hey, Singularity, is this your site?

Years Active : 1994-1995, 2005-2006
Location : Missouri
Software : BBS, TWGS
Game Version : TW 2002 v2, TW 2002 v3
Other Names : The Welcome Mat BBS

If so, I'd like to update it and get your telnet address in there so you show up on the active games list.

Yah, that's me. Live in Indiana now, tho. Started in 1993 on a local BBS, played thru till '95 or so. High school, college,
all that jazz. Moved to Indiana in 2003, started playing again around March of 2005, hosting publicly since 2007.

Cool, I updated it. Here's your page if you want to add anything.

http://wiki.classictw.com/index.php/Gam ... z_Junction

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, I got distracted. I'll try and dig it out tomorrow, memory is that the zip file has directories, and you'll want them, I had all of the helpers in one, official TW versions in another...

Anal retentive - that's me.

Wayne aka The Mad Hatter

You want me to attach a 140 megabyte file to a post?

OK, it's uploading - says about 1/2 hour - did I mention that we get lousy internet service?

Also I have some other stuff that I'll contribute - source code for my own programs. I just want to take time to modify all the files, I'm putting them under the GPL V3 or later.

Wayne

not sure if this what you were looking for before. but this site has many different versions of tw available for download. some pascal and basic source codes too. you probably found it already though.

http://www.tmcbbs.com/twvariants.html