VMS stability back in the day (was Re: NuTek Mac comes)

[Paul Koning]

> On Jul 16, 2016, at 6:56 PM, Antonio Carlini <a.carlini at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> 
> ...
> The specs were (and are) freely available. (I'm not 100% sure that they were free-as-in-beer back then, but they are now).

I assume you had to pay for the cost of printing.  They could be freely reproduced, though, it says so explicitly.

> There was at least one implementation for Linux and (I think ...) another for Solaris. cisco also supported DECnet in some of
> their switches.

Yes, and for that matter, there was a commercial non-DEC DECnet, by Stuart Wecker I think -- he was involved with DDCMP way back when.

> ...
> (I'm assuming that Phase II existed at some point before Phase III, which definitely did exist. I also
> assume that Phase I only acquired that designation once Phase II appeared!)

I suppose so.  Rumor had it that Phase I only existed on RSX, but it appears that there was a PDP-8 implementation as well.  Phase II was implemented on lots of DEC systems, from TOPS-10 to RT-11 to RSTS/E.  My initial involvement with DECnet was as the DECnet/E kernel guy, upgrading DECnet/E from Phase II to Phase III.

	paul