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

[Paul Koning]

> On Jul 17, 2016, at 12:12 PM, John Forecast <john at forecast.name> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Jul 17, 2016, at 11:13 AM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jul 17, 2016, at 11:06 AM, John Forecast <john at forecast.name> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> ...
>>>> 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.
>>>> 
>>> 	I worked at a customer site in Sweden which consisted of a pair of 11/40’s running
>>> 	RSX-11D and DECnet Phase I. I’m pretty sure that Phase I only ran on 11D in the RSX
>>> 	family.
>> 
>> I'd always heard that.  But recently I found Phase I documents, which include protocol specifications of a sort, sufficient to tell that it wouldn't be compatible with Phase II and couldn't readily be made to be.  (In particular, NSP works rather differently.)  And that document was for a PDP-8 OS.
>> 
> 	I meant that RSX-11D was the only supported PDP-11 OS. The RTS/8 DECNET/8
> 	SPD is up on bitsavers with a date of May 1977 so it was already a late addition to
> 	the Phase I development - I had joined the networking group in the Mill in Feb 1977
> 	to work on Phase II. The SPDs for those Phase II products were dated Jun 1978
> 	which seems about right.

So does that mean that RTS/8 DECnet Phase I was built but not shipped?  Or shipped but not supported?  The document I referred to is a full manual "RTS/8 DECNET/8 User's Guide, Order No. AA-5184A-TA".  A note at the start says "converted from scanned text 1-Jun-1996" and just below that "First printing, February 1977".  Chapter 6 is a fairly detained description of protocol message formats, which look vaguely like NSP as we know it but only vaguely.

	paul