Hi,
I am trying to reach a guy named Mark Darvill, can?t remember which list he was on, regards the DEC/HP VMS hardware he asked me to hold onto.
If you are he, or know him, I can be reached via this email or mark.d.benson at icloud.com
Thanks,
?
Mark Benson
I?ve taken down the VAXstation 4000/60 that is my area router, and am preparing to shut further hardware down. For the next week the weather will be brutal. We?re supposed to get up between 107-111F this weekend, and the one day the low is supposed to be 77F (I?m not sure I?ve ever seen that in Oregon).
I hope to be back online by next Wednesday or Thursday. I also hope to take the opportunity to replace the RTC chip in the VAXstation 4000/60, once it starts to cool down, and prep it to move to SCSI2SD (currently runs from a BA350 shelf).
Zane
I was wondering if anybody would care to explain how routine node
maintenance happens for DECnet on non-Tops-20 systems. Specifically,
Johnny's node list on MIM:: changes more or less about once a month,
sometimes more, sometimes less.
Is anybody keeping up on this?? How?? I had a (bi-weekly) re-occurring
batch job which NFT'ed the latest node file from MIM:: and simply used
SETNOD to shove the whole thing into the running monitor, on the
assumption that the monitor would figure out what to do.? While slapping
in the whole list (with .NDINT) during timesharing did strike me as
somewhat wasteful, I didn't pay much attention to the matter as it did work.
This is mistaken.? Tops-20 will not 'make it' work, nor does it
apparently detect certain situations which appear to be problematic.? It
does detect and reject two situations.
1. You may not change either the name or address of the host (I.E., the
Executor).? These can only be set once at boot up. Do other
operating systems have this restriction?
2. You may not change the address of an existing node in the local area.
A node insertion in the local area which usurps an address of another
node deletes that node.? Outside of the local area, you are on your
own.? It does whatever you want, which means that you can have multiple
nodes with the same address.? Is that a problem?? On IP4, this would
been known as 'aliasing', but I don't think DECnet allows this.
So it would appear that the appropriate behavior is that a new node list
implies a system reboot.? Unless I'm actively doing monitor development,
I can't stand doing this.
However, fixing the problem turned out to be pernicious.? Neither of the
two cases above is reported to the user program; there is no way to
determine what might have gone wrong.? There is no way for the user
program to proactively prevent errors because, while you can ask Tops-20
to translate a DECnet address to a node name and to verify that a DECnet
node name exists, there is no way to return the address for a verified
DECnet node name.? Is this an oversight?? Can a user program get the
address of a DECnet node name on other operating systems?
I remediated the low level error reporting issue and implemented a new
function for NODE% to return the address of an existing DECnet node
(.NDVFX or Verify Node Extended).? Fixing SETNOD proved impossible.? I
discovered that the actions to be performed were complex enough when
automated that the dimensions of the solution were wholly beyond its
capabilities.? Not that there was anything wrong with SETNOD, it just
wasn't designed for this kind of heavy lift.? So I rewrote it from
scratch (cleverly naming it SETND2). I'm converging on completion, but I
don't work on it actively, so this will probably be a few more weeks.
Here is some sample output; let's suppose that BOINGO needs its address
changed from 2.399 to 2.400 and that this conflicts with another node
(in this case, APOLLO). To get this to work right, what you need to do
is tell Tops-20 to do is delete BOINGO first, so that there is no name
clash on the insertion.? Then you have to delete APOLLO, so that there
is no address conflict.? Once you are done performing both these
actions, it's safe to do the insertion and Tops-20 doesn't reject it or
otherwise get itself confused.
@*setnd2*
% Insufficient capabilities for INSERT command
SETNODE>*vERBOSITY* (level is) *vERBOSE *
Verbosity level is VERBOSE
SETNODE>*get /sECTION-MAP /nO-ACCESS*
[BIN file: TOMMYT:<SYSTEM>NODE-DATA.BIN.91;RESTRICTED-JFN:13 ]
Mapped one section (4 pages), 1778 Words, 889 Nodes.
SETNODE>*recONSTRUCT /sILENT *
[Closed log file: NUL:]
SETNODE>*shoW aREA 2 uNCHANGED*
[Area 2]
A2RTR?? ADAGIO? ADVENT? ADVNT5? AMAPUR? APOLLO? AUG11 AUGVAX? BASSET?
BEAGLE? BELLS?? BOINGO? BOXER?? BULDOG? CHARON
CODA??? COLLIE? CONDOR? CORGI?? COYOTE? CYPHER? DALMTN DIVISI? DOGPAK?
ELIDYR? ELITE?? FOX???? GLDRTR? GLOVER? GRUNT
HERMES? HUIA??? HUNTER? HUSKY?? JACKAL? JENSEN? KELPIE LABRDR? LAPDOG?
LARGO?? LEGATO? LENTO?? MASTIF? MENTOR? MEZZO
MULTIA? MUTT??? NO0K??? ODST??? OINGO?? OSIRIS? PAVANE POCO??? POODLE?
PUG???? PUGGLE? PUPPY?? R2X899? REACH?? SPARK
TERIER? THEARK? TOMMYT? VENTI?? WLFHND? WOLF??? ZITI
Total nodes in area 2: 67
SETNODE>*shoW **uNCHANGED boiNGO*
BOINGO:: (2.399)
SETNODE>*set 2.400 boingo*
Set existing node BOINGO:: (2.400)
Node BOINGO:: (2.400)
% Removing node BOINGO:: (2.399) from same list to insert in the delete list
% Re-using key text for insertion in delete list, BOINGO (2.399)
% Removing BOINGO::'s previous address (2.399)
% Removing node APOLLO:: (2.400) from same list to insert in the delete list
% Re-using key text for insertion in delete list, APOLLO (2.400)
% Deleting APOLLO:: (2.400) to reassign its address to BOINGO::
% Allowing update request for node BOINGO:: (2.400) because being
deleted as (2.399)
% Removing node BOINGO:: (2.399) from unchanged list because its address
has changed to (2.400)
% Re-using key text for insertion in update list, BOINGO (2.400)
Node change request for BOINGO:: (2.400)
SETNODE>
I have the EXE file for a 8080/Z80 cross assembler, but can't find the
sources.. Anyone have a pointer?
It says "MAC80 10B(112) 8085/Z80 Cross Assembler" on the listing output
MAC80.EXE.1;P775252 19 9728(36) 29-Nov-1983
It's a "tops10 program"...
It can do both 8080 and z80 mnemonics, and the sources I have named mac80
can only do 8080, and they start like this...
;MAC80 - An 8085 cross assembler for the DECsystem-10
; Copyright 1976,1977,1978,1983
; Bruce Tanner / Cerritos College
; 11110 Alondra Blvd.
; Norwalk, CA 90650
SEARCH M80UNV,MACTEN
TITLE. (M80,MAC80A,8085 Cross Assembler)
M80TTL
M80PTX
TWOSEG
RELOC 400000
EXTERN IBUF,OBUF,LBUF,SBUF,MBUF,NOFILE,FILNAM,FILEXT,PPN,OPNOBJ
EXTERN CREFSW,SYMBSW
I've been bumping into a number of bugs in the Tops-20 DECnet
implementation, some worse (like crashing with an ILMNRF and trashing
parts of files) than others (simple job hangs and undocumented
behavior.? Fortunately, I have been able to fix most of them; there's
only one that I had to program around and another that I have yet to
investigate.
Meanwhile, I have a great deal of testing to do of the SETND2 code.?
However, there are a number problems doing that, besides those alluded
to, above.? For a number of cases, I have to start from a fresh boot
with the node table completely empty.? There is no command to 'empty' or
reset it.? So that's a pain.? Another thing you can't do is extract or
inspect the full node population.
It occurred to me that the data structures and associated node
management routines that I wrote for the decisioning logic in SETND2
turn out to be fine for simulating the NODE% JSYS itself.? So what I do
is fork an inferior version of SETND2 and trap the NODE% with a TFORK%.?
It's starting to come together to the point where I need to model the
actual rules used for DECnet node syntax.
I know that a DECnet node can be a maximum of six characters long with
only the numerals 0 (zero) to 9 (nine) and the letters A to Z.? However,
I noticed some code in COMND% that checks to see that a node name has at
least one alphabetic character in it.? I had never thought about that
and was wondering what the actual standard says (or where that standard is).
Does is matter where the letter is?? In other words, are five numeral
zero's followed by the letter 'A' valid?? Is '00000A' OK?
So while I think of it Johnny, two things I've noticed in Swedish
Pascal just today, are Y2K issues in paslib, and (unless something else
is going on) it doesn't seem to handle named directories in
RSX-11M-PLUS, only numeric UICs.
And it doesn't print its version number properly; I'm pretty sure this
is 6.3, but it prints 6.02 in its startup header. I've not looked into
that yet.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
In case someone is using RPM on HECnet, and using DECnet as the
transport protocol, you need to update your configuration of RPM.
The reason is because I moved the RPM repository directory to a new
place. In order to avoid any similar problem in the future, please use
RPM$DIR: instead of LB:[RPM] which was previously the suggested default
when accessing MIM::
You can change your configuration using RPM CONFIG, or edit CONFIG.CMD
in your RPM directory. If you edit the file directly, it is the USER
variable that should be changed.
If people are using RPM with TCP/IP as transport, no changes are needed,
and all should work without any disruption.
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
