Porting ZGRASS... anywhere

[ubersaurus]

I emailed Tom today about possibly backing up his GRASS stuff. Unfortunately, he sold his Wisconsin house last November and junked everything. His copies of RT1, GRASS and the paper copy of the ZGRASS source are gone.

[ballyalley]

1 hour ago, ubersaurus said:

[Tom Defanti] sold his Wisconsin house last November and junked everything. His copies of RT1, GRASS and the paper copy of the ZGRASS source are gone.

 

Ugh.  That gave me a sinking feeling.  It's a weird quirk of human nature to trash our own personal history so easily.  Why is that something that so many people do when "cleaning house?"  In a way I do get it, as Tom seemed reluctant to get the source code out there since it's under copyright.  Still... it's such a shame.

Now we really have to get the ROM dumped from a ZGRASS unit or UV/1.  It's especially important now that we know that J. Fenton's version of ZGRASS was not even close to the latest version used in the UV/1 system.  That's explained in Kevin's interview with Tom:

https://ballyalley.com/ballyalley/interviews/interviews.html#TomDefantiInterviewNotes

I wonder what else was lost in in Tom's collection; I suppose that we'll never know.

Adam

[ubersaurus]

Well there is a chance that a copy of the ZGRASS from that Vipersoft prototype may be recoverable... so stay tuned.