Hi,
It’s been a long while.
Slightly off-topic but this is the best DEC group I am still part of so here goes…
A friend and I might well be about to rescue a pair of VAX 4000/500 systems. We aren’t sure how much we’ll be able to transport in one go but we have them earmarked at least.
Firstly are there any “gotchas” to look out for on these fridge-sized absolute units? I know little aside from what I’ve read in the DEC documentation so far.
Secondly, I am aware these are DSSI based systems. We aren’t sure if the owners will release the disks yet as they could insist on retaining them for data destruction. If we lose them are we completely shanghai’d? Are there and modern solutions for DSSI emulation around at non-stupendous (i.e. hobbyist) prices?
If we need to net-boot them the what’s the skinny on that? I think you can do it using a SimH VAX and some clustering magic IIRC?
All help is greatly appreciated. If we get these I want to put a big effort into saving them and getting them running. I will need a lot of help as I am not at all well versed in VAX hardware.
Thanks!
As some people have noticed the last few months, MIM have been difficult
to reach.
It has come to the point where I just have to move the machine to a new
place, as I'm not having much success solving the current situation.
For people who maybe don't know, Mim is a PDP-11/74 (simulated) which
runs RSX-11M+. It is kindof a hub for Hecnet, as well as a resource for
anyone who wants to find documentation or information about RSX, and
also to find various software for RSX.
I will move Mim this weekend, and so it will be down for a while.
Hopefully this will be a fairly smooth operation, but I'll let people
know when it's going on, and my expectation is that it shouldn't be more
than a couple of hours.
Mim will also change address and name because of this. The new address
to reach Mim on will be Mim.SoftJAR.SE. This name should be stable for
the forseeable future. Physically Mim will move from Sweden to the US
east cost, and be living at LSSM. A big thank you to LSSM and Dave
McGuire in particular for helping out with resources for this.
In practice, for everyone else, once the move is done, it means that:
. Any reference to Mim.Stupi.NET needs to be changed to Mim.SoftJAR.SE.
. Any multinet circuits connecting to Mim should adjust their costs. See
the HECnet information page on Mim about this.
. I will also create a new PyDECnet node at LSSM to act as another
connection point for people who might not be able to connect to
hecnet-1-1023.stupi.net, but which are still in area 1.
. hecnet-1-1023.stupi.net will still be around, and will still be
possible to use.
This do mean that area 1 will be more geographically spread out. Not
ideal, but I'm not expecting this to cause any major issues. Performance
for some might get a bit better or worse, depending on various aspects
and conditions. But in general, if people just keep costs aligned with
recommendations, things should work well.
Best regards,
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
And now I see what you guys were/are doing.
You're trying to use https. I don't have any https server, and when you
try that, you are essentially repeatedly hitting a port that do not
provide any service, and eventually you get blocked.
Stop trying to use https against Mim. :-D
Johnny
On 2025-07-29 20:46, Wilm Boerhout wrote:
> I was out too doing some garden work...
>
> Just cleared my cache and revisited mim.softjar.se -- no response, eventually timed out with "server took too long to respond" or such (translated from Dutch)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Johnny Billquist <bqt(a)softjar.se>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2025 7:08 PM
> To: Wilm Boerhout <wboerhout(a)mailbox.org>
> Subject: Re: [simh] MIM move...
>
> Yeah, you're also blocked.
>
> I was out for a few hours. I'll lift your block now, and you can try again, and I'll have some stuff captured that should allow me to understand what is triggering it.
>
> Johnny
>
> On 2025-07-29 18:40, Wilm Boerhout wrote:
>> Johnny,
>>
>> The DECnet circuit is still up without failure, but I too, get no response at all from the mim.softjar.se website. I'm using Firefox on Windows.
>>
>> My external IP is 95.98.255.226 (odsw48.mywire.org)
>>
>> Wilm
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: simh(a)groups.io <simh(a)groups.io> On Behalf Of Johnny Billquist
>> via groups.io
>> Sent: Friday, July 25, 2025 6:35 PM
>> To: 'The Hobbyist DECnet mailing list' <hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se>;
>> [PiDP-11] <pidp-11(a)googlegroups.com>; simh(a)groups.io;
>> Info-PDP11(a)dbit.com
>> Subject: [simh] MIM move...
>>
>> As some people have noticed the last few months, MIM have been difficult to reach.
>> It has come to the point where I just have to move the machine to a new place, as I'm not having much success solving the current situation.
>>
>> For people who maybe don't know, Mim is a PDP-11/74 (simulated) which runs RSX-11M+. It is kindof a hub for Hecnet, as well as a resource for anyone who wants to find documentation or information about RSX, and also to find various software for RSX.
>>
>> I will move Mim this weekend, and so it will be down for a while.
>> Hopefully this will be a fairly smooth operation, but I'll let people know when it's going on, and my expectation is that it shouldn't be more than a couple of hours.
>>
>> Mim will also change address and name because of this. The new address to reach Mim on will be Mim.SoftJAR.SE. This name should be stable for the forseeable future. Physically Mim will move from Sweden to the US east cost, and be living at LSSM. A big thank you to LSSM and Dave McGuire in particular for helping out with resources for this.
>>
>> In practice, for everyone else, once the move is done, it means that:
>>
>> . Any reference to Mim.Stupi.NET needs to be changed to Mim.SoftJAR.SE.
>>
>> . Any multinet circuits connecting to Mim should adjust their costs. See the HECnet information page on Mim about this.
>>
>> . I will also create a new PyDECnet node at LSSM to act as another connection point for people who might not be able to connect to hecnet-1-1023.stupi.net, but which are still in area 1.
>>
>> . hecnet-1-1023.stupi.net will still be around, and will still be possible to use.
>>
>>
>> This do mean that area 1 will be more geographically spread out. Not
>> ideal, but I'm not expecting this to cause any major issues.
>> Performance for some might get a bit better or worse, depending on
>> various aspects and conditions. But in general, if people just keep
>> costs aligned with recommendations, things should work well.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> 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
I now added a daemon that listens on port 443, and just rejects any
connections. Let me know if that makes peoples lives easier. :-P
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
Greetings,
I noticed this before the move - when I go to the nodename database lookup page, I get a few lines and then MIM doesn't respond to anything after that.
It doesn't appear to serve any more pages. I assume that the webserver has crashed.
I'm not sure how long this has been happening for. I was trying to check if a new node had been added to the list.
Cheers, Wiz!!
MIM move is now underways. The old Mim is up, but be aware that I've
already taken a snapshot of the disks now, which are being transferred.
So anything changed on Mim after this time will not carry over to new Mim.
The transfer will take a number of hours, but I'll let people know once
new Mim is up and running.
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
My pyDECNET router THEARK runs on a Pi Zero W2. Normally all happy and peachy for months on end but from time to time it loses connection to its area router. I started with a simple script that checked the connection from time to time and sent an email. Well now this has grown to a full blown thing with many capabilities so I decided to bring this to the group. I dropped it on GitHub today mkostersitz/hecnet-daemon<https://github.com/mkostersitz/hecnet-daemon>. Take a look and let me know what you think. Hope it is helpful to some
[https://opengraph.githubassets.com/93cedb97f81cb11006d6953fc6eeba5d4eedc794…]<https://github.com/mkostersitz/hecnet-daemon>
mkostersitz/hecnet-daemon - GitHub<https://github.com/mkostersitz/hecnet-daemon>
Process Monitoring: Automatically detects when PyDECNET is not running and restarts it Link Status Monitoring: Checks DECNET link to A2RTR node every 60 seconds Email Notifications: Sends alerts when the DECNET link goes down or comes back up Daemon Mode: Runs as a background service Logging: Comprehensive logging to files and stdout Manual Operations: Support for manual restart and HECNET ...
github.com
I've had alot of progress with HECnet connection, I created another VM
to run linux and pydecnet then proceeded to activate the connection to
HECnet. It all works very well and I have full functioning access. Hit
me up with email to GUARD::MBROWN
There is only one problem I have left, how do I enter the details in
NODENAMES.DAT into the local name lookup. This will be one of those
Phase V problems as previousely griped about. Phase V uses mcr
decnet_register to enter host names and I have done that for a handfull
of commonly used hosts, but I have no Idea how I could do this with the
nodenames.dat file.
I wonder how you yourselves do this with Phase 4, I might be able to get
a clue if I knew how you did this trick in the first place.
Thank You.
It looks like I need some new connections to HECnet, as my existing ones are down. Is there anyone in the US, especially the Pacific Northwest able to setup a Multinet connection? One in Europe as well would be good.
Unfortunately I’m one of the people having trouble to Johnny.
Zane
I've downloaded copies of pyDECnet from two places:
1: svn://akdesign.dyndns.org/pydecnet/trunk/pydecnet (using svn)
2: http://akdesign.dyndns.org:8080/resources/public/index.html
The current version of code at the svn is revision 653.
The current version of the package is V1.1.0-rc2
Is there a difference between the two?
Which is the best source for pyDECnet?
Also, does anyone have any configuration samples they might care to share. I have a working one but I think I am lacking in creativity to make the most out of pyDECnet.
And while I'm at it, is Supratim's pyDECnet monitor page custom? Because it sure doesn't look a lot like mine. But I wouldn't be surprised that his is or that I messed something up on mine.
http://impvax.duckdns.org/pyrtr/index.html
Thanks!
--
John H. Reinhardt
