To: cboyle@MercSkPD.MercSkPO From: "Ron Krebs" Subject: Re: Mark Data Products CC: ----- Original Message ----- From: Curtis Boyle To: rkrebs@cprsm.com Sent: Friday, December 15, 2000 2:47 PM Subject: Re: Mark Data Products >>> "Ron Krebs" - 12/15/00 4:34 PM >>> Hi Curtis, Maybe the following comments will be of interest.... >Actually, that website is how I found you. I was wondering just some general >questions, like where the name "Mark Data Products" came from. The name came from Mona And Ron Krebs. >I was also wondering who was the author of the earliest games that you sold; >such as Berserk/Haywaire, Astro Blast, Calixto Island & Blank Sanctum (the >original text versions) and Cave Hunter. I was the original programmer on all of these (Berserk / Haywire was probably my favorite apart from the adventures) and Mona assisted with story line for the adventures. We like to think that Calixto Island and Black Sanctum were true classics. All of the Mark Data Products adventures used an adventure engine which I developed to cram in the greatest amount of play value. >Reason being, is a fair number of people in the old Coco community are >trying to get in contact with original authors of old Coco software to >1) get some stories behind their development, and >2) to see if the authors are willing to release them on the web as sort of >a historical archive. Sure - no problem >I have released the stuff that I did or contributed to that was commercial >(like NitrOS9 - an upgrade of Os9 Level II operating system redone for the >6309 chip), and we have contacted some other authors like Mike Hughey and >Ken Kalish who have agreed to do the same. This is mainly for nostalgia for >some of the people who grew up with these computers, for newer people >running the emulators that allow the old classic software to be run again >on modern PC's, Macs or Linux boxes, and also just to have a historical >record of what developement has gone on before. > If you want to see some examples of the web pages I have done (or are >doing) relating to this kind of thing, please check out the following URL's: >http://nitros9.stg.net/coco_game_list.html - This is (hopefully) going to be > a historical record of every Coco game I can find information on, including > downloads of any that have been released publicly. This one is very much > still under construction. >http://www.sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca/~af960 - A general Coco site (I still tinker > with it at home, because it is both fun, and educational for learning, at > a low level, how operating systems work (such as OS9/NitrOS9). Very nostalgic to browse through some of this stuff. >If you know of the authors of some of the earlier games you sold, or even >authored them yourself, I wouldn't mind some information on them. And, if >you did author them yourself, would you mind if we made them publicly >available? Please feel free. Let me know if you have more questions. >Thanks! >P.S. - Who manufactured your keyboard upgrade? It had the best feel >out several of the upgrade keyboards I had tried (yours, HJL and whoever >made the "Premium keyboard"). This is a very interesting story. I modified all of our games to run on the Dragon Data version of the CoCo sold in the U.K. and made very fine friendships with some of the directors. They arranged fort me buy their Hi-Tek keyboards right from the Hi-Tek factory here in California. We did all of the adaptive work and prepared all of the kits.