27 Feb
2026
27 Feb
'26
6:28 p.m.
On Feb 23, 2026, at 4:34 PM, johnforecast--- via
cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
...
The files on Jay’s disk images confirm that it is a phase III implementation targeted for
an 11/23. The node address is 124 so that implies that it was part of a second release of
phase III (the first phase III release only supported 32 network nodes, while the later
one supported up to 256 nodes).
I don't remember two releases of Phase III. The only 32 node notion I can think of
was just a marketing restriction, created by people who didn't believe routers could
deal with a "big" network having 256 nodes. In any spec I ever saw, the node
address was an 8-bit value (though, amusingly, sent in a 16 bit field -- which is why
Phase IV interoperates with Phase III so easily).
Something similar happened in Phase IV, where marketing didn't believe in big areas
nor lots of areas. So we just built the Engineering Network with several thousand nodes
and eventually 63 area numbers (more than 63 actual areas, in fact), and it just worked.
Feh.
paul