HECnet

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15595 discussions

by mark.darvill＠mac.com

After an extended period moving systems from one end of my house to the other, I have got Area 22 back online again today. I have updated the tunnels to point to all of the definitions in Brian's latest router config update. Are there any others that I should be peering to? Now HECnet is back up and running I will start adding some some of my real and simulated machines. 73, Mark

4 years, 4 months

DECnet/Python --> Tops20 V4.1

by R.Voorhorst＠swabhawat.com

@Thomas & @Paul Paul helped me in the past with some Rsts Decnet-III stuff and we got that working with Dmc/Dmr, so we got a functioning phase-III router from that and at a point I also introduced the Tops20 V4.1 Decnet problems; I think he got that Simh image from me for testing, so if one is interested I can provide a Tops20 V4.1 Decnet image. Problem there was, that it only communicates with other Tops20 4.1 Decnet but notcontrary to expectations with phase-III. This was not supposed to be a working setup as the KS10 was meant to connect with the Kmc/Dup line to a DN20/200 Pdp11 based network box to join Decnet. These boxes ran Decnet-III on a Rsx11M V3.1 platform and the software load image was generated and built on Tops20 (or Tops10 probably as well) but should be booted from a KL10 based system. As this software was from link libraries, source code was missing. Simh Pdp11 could be configured to run the network parallel ANF10 without problems, but with some tricks activating the built Decnet image ? after all it is RSX11S bootable within the Rsx11M 3.1 environment - on a suitable configured Simh Pdp11 sim, it stops somewhere in the Decnet initialization phase. Too difficult to debug that at the time. So Tops20 V4.1 Decnet is quite useless as it looks more than Phase-II with enhancements that stops it working with proper phase-III. It is still a problem to be solved sometime? Best regards, Reindert From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Thomas DeBellis Sent: Saturday, 06 November, 2021 01:10 To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE Subject: Re: [HECnet] DECnet/Python Boy, now that is a pal! So where would somebody like me be able to get that? The 4.1 Galaxy has some very interesting things in MOUNTR that were sadly removed that I would like to put in at some point in order to be able to set super-domestic on a per-structure basis. super-domestic can make your life easier because you have less directory and user numbers overall to deal with. However, the other side of that coin is that you have less of them total. If you have a large number of directories, users and structures, you run out of number, maybe, maybe (it's an 18 bit field) There's also the case of a restored structure with it's own numbers that might clash with super-domestic. That might happen if you grab a lot of DECUS stuff (although there is brokeness there, too) Still for, with automated number management, much of the headache (and hence reason) for super-domestic goes away and I'd rather have the extra granularity. It really depends on how you're going to use the system and how 'Unixy' you want certain things to work. So I'd rather shut it off for my purposes, but I sure wouldn't want it not to be available. _____ On 11/4/21 7:30 PM, Paul Koning wrote: A kind soul sent me a TOPS-20 V4.1 SIMH disk a while ago with basic information, and that's what I use for my Phase II testing. It has in its <DECNET> directory some sources: NETCON bits, NFT, DAP. I also realized there's a DECnet-20 V2 (Phase II) user manual on Bitsavers, which combines programming and management documentation. It mentions that Phase II NCP has a NICE protocol just like the later versions, except that it doesn't seems to be compatible. At least my NICE listener doesn't like what it hears. Something else to play with at some point. paul On Nov 4, 2021, at 5:23 PM, Thomas DeBellis <tommytimesharing at gmail.com <mailto:tommytimesharing at gmail.com> > wrote: Where did you get that NETCON from? I don't have it. Or is a Tops-10 NETCON? (which I wouldn't have, either) _____ On 11/4/21 3:22 PM, Paul Koning wrote: I found the code, it's in NETCON (specifically, NCP). So now all I have to do is reverse engineer it. That's going to be interesting because I haven't looked at Macro-10 in 45 years, and even back then I didn't really know it well at all. paul _____ On Oct 28, 2021, at 9:26 AM, Paul Koning <mailto:paulkoning at comcast.net> <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote: I'm guessing it has to do with learning the shape of the Phase II network. That's an entirely different problem than Phase III and later. The connect is by name, so object 0, object name TOPOL. And I don't have anything to answer that request so I have no trace. I suppose I could build a dummy responder just to see what question is asked. If indeed it's Phase II topology related, it would make sense for the host not to have that server, and of course it would also go away in Phase III. The host requests, but does not offer, "intercept" which is node name based routing in Phase II that was implemented only in a few places. Somewhere I saw that it exists only to get past the front end (on larger machines) which was handled as a separate node so it counts as a network hop. Without intercept, Phase II only goes a single hop. I found the code, it's in NETCON (specifically, NCP). So now all I have to do is reverse engineer it. That's going to be interesting because I haven't looked at Macro-10 in 45 years, and even back then I didn't really know it well at all. paul _____ On Oct 27, 2021, at 9:32 PM, Thomas DeBellis <mailto:tommytimesharing at gmail.com> <tommytimesharing at gmail.com> wrote: TOPOL? Hmm... No, I hadn't heard of that, either. It sounds almost familiar, but I don't know why Tops-20 would be asking for it because it doesn't appear to be serving it, viz:...

4 years, 4 months

DEC 4000/500 from years ago

by Mark＠Misty.com

Hi, Around 2007 I gave away my pair of 4000/500A systems, I believe to Brian Hechinger. They were taking up way too much space in the dining room, and that I just wasn't that interested in putting the time and money into sustaining the pair. I also really wanted SCSI storage, but Q-BUS SCSI controllers were way out of my financial reach at the time. Since then, circumstances have changed, and with renewed interest, I acquired a BA23 Q-BUS MicroVAX, and eventually a Q-BUS SCSI controller, but nothing that came close to those 4000/500As. Some years later, I believe Brian moved, and offered these up again on one of these lists, or maybe CCTALK, but I missed that posting until too late, and lost track of who ended up with those. If these are in use, I wish whoever has them the best, and am extremely glad at least they did not end up scrapped; I did my part towards that. However, if whoever has them is no longer using them, I am here and interested in whether one or both might be available. I hope this is an appropriate posting, and it is not misunderstood by those involved. Mark -- Mark G. Thomas <Mark at Misty.com>, KC3DRE

4 years, 4 months

Apologies to those downstream of me on area 29

by Keith.Halewood＠pitbulluk.org

Hi, Apologies for my HECnet connections being up and down over the past day or two. I finally decided to 'upgrade' to a Draytek Vigor 2865ac router from the older 2862ac and/or the home grown linux/pf-sense I have been experimenting with on and off. Anyway, the documentation stated that I could dump the config of the old vigor and install it into the new one. It looked ok but quite frankly wasn't. Half the WAN side of things wouldn't come up and kept crashing the entire unit. So I configured it from scratch... and cleared out a load of old stuff as a result. Routing policy doesn't work properly and gets misconfigured when you're not using the default 'address of router' for NAT-based operations - support request logged. IPv6... yes I know you don't want to know or care... nevertheless... There's some (state sponsored?) port scanning on random IPv6 host addresses with my prefix. The router is naturally blocking them but the damned IPv6 neighbour table is filling up with them! They don't go anywhere, but over the last few hours, the table now has about 900 entries - another support request logged... and the bloody router hasn't been out of its box for more than a day! Keith

4 years, 4 months

Is MIM running?

by bob＠jfcl.com

. I can't seem to reach it. It's not a big problem, but I wondered if it was my issue or somebody else's. Bob

4 years, 5 months

A2RTR downtime

by bob＠jfcl.com

A2RTR will be down tomorrow (Monday) for a couple of hours sometime between 9AM PDT and 3PM. It's not my doing - PG&E is replacing a transformer and the power will be off. I have battery backup for some of my equipment, but not A2RTR. Sorry. It's also going to have to go down sometime again, maybe next weekend, so I can replace a disk drive that's failing. I bought two identical drives and plan to set up a RAID 1 array this time. If anybody has set up a software RAID on Ubuntu, using the md driver and mdadm, for the system drive and you have advice, let me know. Espcially if you managed to make both of the drives bootable. Bob

4 years, 5 months

Some scanned documents for DEC

by mark＠wickensonline.co.uk

Just reviewing a retrochallenge entry when I came across some scanned DEC documents that may not be available anywhere else: https://jbretro.wordpress.com/the-latest-google-drive-link/ Regards, Mark. -- https://www.qrz.com/db/M0NOM/P

4 years, 5 months

PDP-11 Unix V7M-11 V1.0 under SIMH

by tony.nicholson＠computer.org

Recently Al Kossow made available a zip file containing a Micro/PDP-11 installation kit for Unix V7M-11 V1.0 on bitsavers as RX50 disk images. Tinkering away here in Covid lockdown, I've managed to get this running under SIMH pdp11 emulating an almost historically accurate PDP-11/23 plus. I've placed the SIMH initialisation file, a couple of RD51 disk images and an "installation recipe" for making these disks on GitHub at - https://github.com/agn453/V7M-11 While I mainly had exposure to later versions of Unix and Ultrix-11 on a PDP-11/70 as an undergraduate - this one surely brings back memories! Tony -- Tony Nicholson <tony.nicholson at computer.org>

4 years, 5 months

Back on HECNET!

by mark＠wickensonline.co.uk

After a prolonged outage Area 4 is now back on hecnet via a new Raspberry Pi, so the archive on SLAVE:: is now available again (all the time the windows vm that it is being emulated on is up) as well as a debian VM hosted SIMH ORAC recreation. I'm planning on using a (real) VAXstation during this years October Retrochallenge (it starts tomorrow): https://www.retrochallenge.org/ Twitter: @retrochallenge After a shaky couple of retrochallenge I've decided to step in and help out with this one, but will also be hopefully using it as an excuse to spend a bit of time on DEC equipment. Also please note that it is DEC Legacy in Windermere, UK in two weekends: 9th/10th October. http://wickensonline.co.uk/declegacy/ Regards, Mark. -- https://www.qrz.com/db/M0NOM/P

4 years, 5 months

Announcing TCP/IP V2.7 for RSX-11M-PLUS

by bqt＠softjar.se

This is a re-release announcement of TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS. This is version 2.7 of BQTCP/IP. The reason for the re-release is that the patches mentioned for TTDRV were incomplete, and lacking instructions about them. This has been fixed now. It's been five months since the last official update, and there been various smaller improvements. Highlights: . Many daemons now run under NETUIC, if defined. Which means logical names that are mainly used for configuration of these daemons now can be in that group logical name table instead, which removes a bunch of logicals from the global table. . Improvements have been done to TCP to be able to have larger buffers, if desired. . Patch files for the TT: driver have been included, which if used, can be combined with a new task to get logical names defined at login time, which tells from where a user connected using telnet. See [TELNETD]README.TXT for instructions on how to install the patches for the TT: driver. Detailed information on things that have been done since the last release: TCP: . Removed immediate ACK for TCP packets with PSH set. . Added settable TCP syn queue maximum size . Bugfix. TCP retransmissions failed if window size was 0. . Reworked TCP FIN logic and buffer management. TCP can now deal with up to 64K buffer size. . Added IO.IFL function to TC: . Added _iflush() to IPC library. TELNET: . Added TNC2 task to define logicals at telnet terminals at login. . Added files needed to update terminal driver with additional functionality. See README.DOC on TNC2 for details. . Changed TELNET to run under netuic. FTP/FTPD: . Added the ability to set a session timeout for FTPD. . Changed FTPD to run under NETUIC. . Added handling of TI: in FTP GET/PUT commands. . Added handling of TI: in FTPD STOR/RETR commands. . Added handling of file attribute errors in FTP/FTPD. . Improved ETA computation in FTP, when data rate is low. MAILD: . Improved MAILD to not use a separate MAILDN task for new mail. Local mails are now delivered by MAI..., which also is responsible for the local mail API. . Rewritten maild automatic forwarding handling. . Improved MAILD error mail generation. Multinet: . Improved active tcp multinet connection handling. LPT: . Fixed LPR mode of LPT spooler. . Changed LPT to run under netuic. HTTPD: . Improved httpd error logging. . Added more logging information in HTTPD. NTP: . Changed NTP to run under netuic. DHCP: . Changed DHCP to define NTP logical name in group table. IPINS: . Changed IPINS to define logicals for DHCP, FTPD and TELNET under the network uic group instead of global. Some additional notes: As usual, I would recommend people to update as soon as possible. The changes are not critical, but will lead to a much better experience. The patches to the TT: driver cannot be applied automatically, but requires users to apply the patches themselves, and then run SYSGEN to generate a new system. Once added, the TNC2 task can be run at login, and will define logical names for the user telling where he is connected from, if using telnet. The TT: driver patches also allows the updated MCR to give more information with the DEV command (SHOW TERMINAL in DCL). As usual, the distribution is available from: ftp://mim.update.uu.se/bqtcp.dsk ftp://mim.update.uu.se/bqtcp.tap ftp://ftp.update.uu.se/pub/pdp11/rsx/tcpip/tcpip.dsk !!! BQTCP is also available through RPM !!! (As an additional note, I have become aware of that there is some device proxying access to the ftp service at Mim. This might lead to failure to transfer large files. If you observe such problems, try connecting to Mim at port 10021 instead, which is an alternative port for the ftp server, and which circumvents the proxy.) The documentation is also available through ftp on Mim, or also at http://mim.update.uu.se/tcpipdoc I hope people find this update useful. 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

4 years, 6 months

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