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. Sounds promising. 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. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 22-Oct-2008 at 12:00 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -45.4 F (-43.0 C) Windchill -74.5 F (-59.2 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 10.4 kts Grid 1 Barometer 677.0 mb (10742 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html