HECnet March 2023

hecnet@lists.dfupdate.se

29 participants
8 discussions

by Mark Berryman

I finally got my issues with Comcast straightened out and I now have static IP addresses. They are IPv4: 50.185.8.122 IPv6: 2603:300b:6c4:21a0:c77b:4f58:27e4:6de2 These are also always available in DNS as decnet.theberrymans.com <http://decnet.theberrymans.com/> Hopefully, this will be the last change for a while. Mark Berryman Area 27

9 months, 3 weeks

A milestone

by Johnny Billquist

I have been planning for a long time to post a small reflection when I reached 1000 nodes registered in the hecnet nodename database. This happened tonight. I think it is a pretty cool thing. There are now 1000 nodenames registered in this small hobby DECnet. I guess you could say it's actually not that small. However, I know that rather few machines are actually online, and it might even be that the majority of nodes registered have never been online. My guess is that maybe 5% of the registered machines are usually online. But I do not have any hard data to back this up. HECnet started out about 20 years ago from a desire I had to hook up a PDP-11 I had at home, to some machines at my university, using DECnet. At the time, I didn't have any TCP/IP for RSX, and the only way to get any kind of networking was to try and come up with some way of getting DECnet up. My first implementation basically just forwarded a serial port communication between two Unix machines. And on each end I then hooked that serial port into a PDP-11 running RSX, and used DDCMP for the actual DECnet link. This worked, but was obviously not that fast, as the serial ports were limited to 9600 bps. After a year or so, I figured I could instead write a small program that would forward ethernet packets. Using UDP I basically had the same property as a local ethernet, but it could be located somewhere pretty far away. From a DECnet point of view, it would appear as if they were on the same ethernet segment, while in reality they were nowhere near. As DECnet have pretty long timeouts on things, it turned out this worked without a hitch, and I could achieve much better throughput. Not long after that, the first other users were hooked up to HECnet as well. This was maybe around 2003 or so. Another data point is that there are 113 different persons that have one or more nodenames registered. Happy milestone, everyone, and thanks for being around. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

1 year, 8 months

KL10/RP06/TU77 Power requirements

by Thomas DeBellis

I got asked what the power requirements would have been for 1985 vintage KL10 based system. Does anybody know where I would be able to find such information? I had thought it was in the site installation guide, but I haven't found an online version, yet. About the only thing I can remember is that it was three phase power and that the power supplies were very inefficient.

1 year, 9 months

Bard writes a song about DECnet

by Supratim Sanyal

I asked Bard to “Write a song about digital equipment corporation’s DECnet network”. The AI is surprising, the ending surreal. (Verse 1) Digital Equipment Corporation, DECnet was your creation. A suite of network protocols, To connect your computers. (Chorus) DECnet, DECnet, It was the best network around. DECnet, DECnet, It connected us all. (Verse 2) You could connect your PDP-11s, To your VAX/VMS machines. You could share files and printers, And communicate with ease. (Chorus) DECnet, DECnet, It was the best network around. DECnet, DECnet, It connected us all. (Bridge) But then the internet came along, And DECnet fell out of favor. But it will always be remembered, As the network that connected us all. (Chorus) DECnet, DECnet, It was the best network around. DECnet, DECnet, It connected us all.

1 year, 9 months

Copying known nodes command.

by Brian Roth

Hello all, Just added a simh vax 11/780 to HECnet node 31.270 (FATTY) . Circuit is up. Using the copy known nodes command I get "unable to connect to listener" error. Any thoughts on this? Thank you, Brian.

1 year, 9 months

Re: DECnet/8 (was: Re: Copying known nodes command.) --> Mail to Paul @18-nov-2021> RE: Decnet8 and Pydecnet met Pdp8 --> update 8

by R. Voorhorst

L.S. ( & Paul), I sent the mail below (in Dutch) to Paul regarding Decnet-8. In short the conclusions translated: 1. I ironed out some minor bugs and got it running on a Simh Pdp8A simulator with KT8 in Km8 mode with 32 kW memory on Rts8-V2b and with Os8 in 12 kW in background. It has working basic Tlk/Lsn and Nip functionality (see display of Nip below) based on serial lines Ttix/Ttox and with/without Kg8 crc support. It is not very useful beyond that, unless provided with customer programming, and the ddcmp communication can easily be disrupted/poisoned by introducing incomprehensible net traffic packages from Pydecnet (routing messages); the error recovery is not well enough or absent and will kill the line communications leading to a software reboot. Within the Pdp8 framework it is stable (enough?) though. Decnet8 should also work with Dp01/Dp8E sync lines but these are not (yet) implemented and with the DKC8-A parallel interface (also not implemented) 2. This config could be reconfigured and made runnable on a standard Simh Pdp8. As only Decnet8 packet exchange is looked for, the original setup will do. 3. For future expansion the standard max 32 kW memory will not be enough and for Pdp8a Kt8 with up to 128 kW support, Decnet-8 has to be converted to Macrel/Link code within Rts8-V3. It could run with Os8 background in 342 kW and with a bank-contained Fpp8 in another 32 kW it leaves 65 kW for Rts8 and Decnet8. That conversion is not difficult to do but a job which has to be (and will be) done soon enough. 4. To make it more usable, Decnet8 will have to be lifted to Phase-II which is somewhat :( more work. Not too much differences in Ddcmp but much more in Nsp It is all a matter of available resources. 5. I can provide Paul with the basic config that still runs over here so that he can play around. Best regards, Reindert -----Original Message----- From: Robert Armstrong [mailto:bob@jfcl.com] Sent: Monday, 13 March, 2023 20:12 To: 'The Hobbyist DECnet mailing list' <hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se> Subject: [HECnet] Re: DECnet/8 (was: Re: Copying known nodes command.) >Paul Koning <paulkoning(a)comcast.net> wrote: >I just went back to the "decnet8.doc" file which is a DECnet for RTS-8 >user manual and internals document. Among other things, it describes >the protocol (DDCMP and NSP). > >I don't know much about PDP-8 software, but if someone manages to get >that code running I'll take a stab at PyDECnet support for talking to it. Can pyDECnet do asynchronous DECnet over a telnet port? I'm thinking the easiest way to set this up for debugging/testing would be to use simh for the PDP-8 and a virtual KL8-E connected to pyDECnet. Ultimately it would be nice to run it on real hardware with a real async DDCMP connection, but that's for later. Bob _______________________________________________ HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se To unsubscribe send an email to hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se **************************************************************************** ******************************** Dag Paul, Er is inmiddels weer wat water door de rivieren gestroomd en ik heb basis decnet8 werkend gekregen: ****************** NETWORK INFORMATION PROGRAM V1D PHYSICAL LINE STATUS [DDCMP V1A] LINE NODNAM (#) STATE DRIVER VRSN UP SINCE 0 SWBZ04 (161) ON-LINE KL8J 1A 0:46:13 17-NOV-76 1 SWBZ02 (157) OFF-LINE KL8J 1A LOGICAL LINK STATUS [NSP V1C] CHAN STATE LINE TASK SRCE-NAME[PPN] TYPE LINK DEST-NAME[PPN] TYPE LINK 1 UNUSED 0 35 TLK [1,3] 0 6 2 UNUSED 0 36 TLK [1,2] 0 2 PHYSICAL LINE ERROR STATUS LINE 0: NO ERRORS 16 MESSAGES TRANSMITTED 12 MESSAGES RECEIVED LINE 1: NO ERRORS 0 MESSAGES TRANSMITTED 0 MESSAGES RECEIVED ******************* Het bleek nog niet eens zo moeilijk te zijn meer een zaak hoe de decnet configuratie volgens de lokale spelregels met eigenaardigheden om te zetten in assembler parameters en dan het rts-8 systeem te bouwen. De onderlaag lijkt (voorlopig) goed genoeg te werken, maar de cliënten TLK/LSN voldoen niet compleet aan hun specs. Maar ook de selectie van node naam blijkt niet afdoende; een pakket naar een node die niet adjacent is wordt gewoon door de adjacent node als bestemming geaccepteerd terwijl de bestemming node naam niet de juist is. Met name het zenden van berichten naar de eigen node werkt niet en dus ook de default commando's niet waar de eigen node naam wordt geëvalueerd. Het lijkt dat decnet8 de mogelijkheid van een alias definitie niet ondersteunt. Ook lijkt 0:: niet een optie te zijn als alias maar zou misschien wel moeten. Wat betreft de verdere weg is het duidelijk dat Decnet8 alleen zal werken binnen de niche Pdp8 en dat communicatie met andere types decnet nodes uitgesloten is. Dit betekent m.i. dat voor afdoende Decnet8 functionaliteit het product naar Phase-II moet worden opgetild met eventueel verzwakte functionaliteit door het weglaten van niet benodigde deel functies (Ddcmp MOP boot?). Dat betekent dat een Phase-II compatibele Decnet8 kan communiceren met de andere Phase-II nodes zoals al in aanleg aanwezig moet zijn geweest vlak voordat het product afgedankt werd. Zouden er nog ergens kopieën van rondzwerven? Enig idee? In elk geval betekent dit geen wijzigingen voor Pydecnet aangezien ik aanneem dat er verder geen Phase-I/? ondersteuningswensen voor Pydecnet aanwezig zullen zijn? Ik ga ervan uit dat Pydecnet wel de Phase-II intercept ondersteunt, anders moet er een Dec variant bestaan die dat kan invullen. Zijn er nog wetenwaardigheden die in acht moeten worden genomen voor het (eventuele) omzetten naar Phase-II? Decnet8 intercept zal m.i. niet tot het aangeboden palet gaan behoren. Kan Pydecnet omgaan met async lijnen die naar Tcp/ip sockets i.p.v. com poorten afgebeeld zijn? Nu lijkt het erop dat alleen synchrone lijnverbindingen werken in die modus wat een beperking inhoudt. Reindert **************************************************************************** ****************************

1 year, 9 months

Another "joining HECnet" request

by Mike Shields

Hello all - long time member of the list, and about time for me to get a machine connected. I have a PiDP-11 running RSX-11M-PLUS 4.6 and BQTCP/IP. It's emulated, but is up 24/7 and I'm interested in allowing guest logins or other remote use of the machine. (Even if only to keep those sweet blinkenlights moving around in more interesting patterns than the idle loop!) I'm in Northern Virginia, USA and see that there are two areas in my neighborhood, 59 and 31. Who would I reach out to regarding connection to either area? Also - I'm no RSX-11m wizard (still learning), so I'd be interested in any pointers to the incantations necessary to forge the Multinet connection from RSX-11M-PLUS (if this is indeed the recommended approach). Thanks all - looking forward to getting packets flowing. - Mike

1 year, 9 months

Re: A milestone

by Johnny Billquist

Yes, LEO was #1000. :-) Johnny On 2023-03-09 02:32, Brian Roth wrote: > Wow, very cool. I was just looking at my Directory of computer networks > at lunch the other day and scanning over the SPAN network from 1990.Its > hard to believe just 30 years ago there was a worldwide DECnet network > with over 17,000 computers, real machines doing real work. Its pretty > cool to actually see in detail every machine type on SPAN (almost > entirely DEC) , machine names, VMS version and even phone numbers. BTW > was my machine LEO the 1000th? > > > On Wednesday, March 8, 2023 at 03:47:26 PM EST, Johnny Billquist > <bqt(a)softjar.se> wrote: > > > I have been planning for a long time to post a small reflection when I > reached 1000 nodes registered in the hecnet nodename database. > > This happened tonight. I think it is a pretty cool thing. There are now > 1000 nodenames registered in this small hobby DECnet. I guess you could > say it's actually not that small. > > However, I know that rather few machines are actually online, and it > might even be that the majority of nodes registered have never been > online. My guess is that maybe 5% of the registered machines are usually > online. But I do not have any hard data to back this up. > > HECnet started out about 20 years ago from a desire I had to hook up a > PDP-11 I had at home, to some machines at my university, using DECnet. > At the time, I didn't have any TCP/IP for RSX, and the only way to get > any kind of networking was to try and come up with some way of getting > DECnet up. > > My first implementation basically just forwarded a serial port > communication between two Unix machines. And on each end I then hooked > that serial port into a PDP-11 running RSX, and used DDCMP for the > actual DECnet link. > > This worked, but was obviously not that fast, as the serial ports were > limited to 9600 bps. > > After a year or so, I figured I could instead write a small program that > would forward ethernet packets. Using UDP I basically had the same > property as a local ethernet, but it could be located somewhere pretty > far away. From a DECnet point of view, it would appear as if they were > on the same ethernet segment, while in reality they were nowhere near. > As DECnet have pretty long timeouts on things, it turned out this worked > without a hitch, and I could achieve much better throughput. > > Not long after that, the first other users were hooked up to HECnet as > well. This was maybe around 2003 or so. > > Another data point is that there are 113 different persons that have one > or more nodenames registered. > > Happy milestone, everyone, and thanks for being around. > > Johnny > > -- > Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus > || on a psychedelic trip > email: bqt(a)softjar.se <mailto:bqt@softjar.se> || Reading > murder books > pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol > _______________________________________________ > HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se > <mailto:hecnet@lists.dfupdate.se> > To unsubscribe send an email to hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se > <mailto:hecnet-leave@lists.dfupdate.se> > > _______________________________________________ > HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se > To unsubscribe send an email to hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

1 year, 9 months

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HECnet March 2023