22 Oct
2008
22 Oct
'08
10:35 a.m.
Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at usap.gov> wrote:
That matches my impression as well.
There is a DDCMP implementation in there as well.
I wonder if the TLK and LSN programs are compatible with the ones on RSX.
Someone asked about compatibility between phase III and phase IV, which
Paul Koenig answered.
I have another question, though.
As I've read it, phase III nodes can talk with phase II nodes, just as
phase IV can talk with phase III. But can phase IV talk with phase II?
Since DECNET/8 is phase II, this is somewhat interesting...
I doubt I'll have time to look more into this any time soon, but unless
someone else manage to get this working I definitely will try it sooner
or later.
Could anyone put up the files for convenient access with ftp?
Johnny
On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 07:54:04AM -0400, djg at
pdp8.net wrote:
I will poke around in that tomorrow when our sat rises.
That definitely looks like DECNET/8. Fun!
Does
anyone actually have a copy of the DECnet-8 software
I have disk images which seem to be it.
http://www.pdp8online.com/cgi-bin/htsearch?words=decnet The first two
are from disks which were labeled decnet 1 and decnet 2
Sounds promising.
All the RTS docs I have seen are from dbit.
http://www.pdp8online.com/pdp8cgi/query_docs/query.pl?Search=rts
ftp://ftp.dbit.com/pub/pdp8/doc/
After looking all day, I finally found the doc file I recently
discovered (most likely from dbit). It's an ASCII file named
'decnet8.doc', internally designated "AA-5184A-TA", and happens
to briefly reference a couple of other DEC docs, "DEC-08-ORTMA",
and "DEC-8E-HMM3A".
The primary doc file describes programs like TLK and LSN and NIP.
TLK and LSN are a line-at-a-time messaging pair. NIP (Network
Information Program) prints network status and diagnostic information.
At first pass, DECNET/8 appears to support local traffic (process-to-
process or terminal-to-terminal) as well as a variety of interfaces
for node-to-node traffic. One list includes the KL8E, KL8J-A, KL8A,
KL8M, DP8E (interprocessor buffer), and DKC8-A (parallel).
So to amend my previous speculations, DECNET/8 appears to provide a
basic messaging utility and user-written applications, but does not
come with any bundled file transfer capabilities. 
23 Oct
23 Oct
12:40 a.m.
On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 07:35:21PM +0200, Johnny Billquist wrote:
Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at usap.gov> wrote:
Yep... I dug around today and it looks good.
I will poke around in that tomorrow when our sat rises.
That definitely looks like DECNET/8. Fun! I wonder if the TLK and LSN programs are compatible
with the ones on RSX.
There's a comment in TLK.PA about a change made in 1976 to add "PDP11
COMPATIBILITY", so I think it's possible.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 23-Oct-2008 at 07:30 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -53.5 F (-47.5 C) Windchill -86.9 F (-66.0 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 12.1 kts Grid 21 Barometer 676.2 mb (10772 ft)
Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
7:52 a.m.
I wonder if the TLK and LSN programs are compatible
with the ones on RSX.
FWIW, TLK/LSN exists in RSTS also.
Someone asked about compatibility between phase III and
phase IV, which
Paul Koenig answered.
I have another question, though.
As I've read it, phase III nodes can talk with phase II nodes, just as
phase IV can talk with phase III. But can phase IV talk with phase II?
Since DECNET/8 is phase II, this is somewhat interesting...
I thought the comment was that DECnet/8 is Phase III?
In any case, the question is no. Compatibility is one phase up, so Phase III understands
II, and IV understands III, but IV->II isn't supported. It's possible that
someone did implement that; it wouldn't be all that difficult. But for example
DECnet/E does not. I just checked... the message code for the Phase II init message is in
the definitions file, but it isn't mentioned in the routing layer code so the state
machine for handling that message is absent.
paul
PS. I noticed that the pdf/dec/DECnet directory on bitsavers.org has some Phase II and
some Phase III docs (not clearly differentiated -- the 1978 docs are Phase II, the 1980
ones are Phase III). But there are no Phase IV docs there. I know they exist elsewhere;
having those copied to bitsavers would be a good thing.
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Paul_Koning＠Dell.com