Announcing TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2015-01-14 17:10, Mouse wrote:
>> Well, it's been a long time project, but I'm happy to finally
>> announce a more public initial release of TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS.
>
> This is very impressive.  Even for bqt@, this is very impressive.

Thanks.

>> If you happen to have an RSX system which you are conneting from, you
>> can also try getting the BQTCP.TAP tape image.  Such an image will not
>> transport cleanly to a non-RSX system, however.
>
> I'm curious: why wouldn't it?  Do the FTP client and server recognize
> one another, or is it more "will not transport cleanly to a system not
> implementing $OBSCURE_FTP_FEATURE", or what?

Nah. The problem is simpler than that. It all relates to the fact that 
files under RSX are very different than under Unix. File in RSX are 
organized in different ways. And virtual tapes are of variable sized 
records. So, how would I communicate that across FTP? And the actual 
length of those records?

Essentially any binary file under RSX cannot be transferred over FTP, 
with a couple of exceptions:
Fixed length record files under RSX will transfer all the content of the 
file over the link. You will of course not know what the record length 
was, but that you could reconstruct after the fact.
Binary files where the record lengths are irrelevant. These will also 
work just fine.

When the FTP client under RSX talks to another RSX machines FTP server, 
it detects this fact, and do transfer a bunch of metadata about the file 
in addition to the actual file content, so that all stuff gets preserved.
This also means that you can FTP indexed files over FTP between RSX 
machines. I have a plan to extend this to also work against VMS 
machines. I just need a little more time.

>> I hope some people will find this useful/amusing. :-)
>
> I won't find it useful personally, at least not in the near future; I'm
> not running RSX.  And I wouldn't call it amusing.  I'd call it other
> things, such as "impressive" or "awesome".  I'm tempted to pick up the
> code just to read it over, as I'm sure there's a lot I could learn from
> it, but I doubt I'll have the leisure to indulge that inclination
> anytime soon. :-(

It will take a lot of time to browse through the thing. The basic ARP, 
IP, UDP, TCP, and a couple of tools alone are about 500K of MACRO-11.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol