- HECnet - lists @ Update

by tommytimesharing＠gmail.com

After sending my last update on 36 bit DECnet, I went back to working a large ALGOL program from 1980 that I recently scanned. Again, the ALGOL that ships with PANDA is quite old, dating to 10A145, whereas the most recent version I picked up from a Tops-10 site on HECnet is 10B310--so I've been dusting that off. I remembered that it is not Y2K compliant, so I quick fixed it, in ALGCON.MAC. at DEC2:, change DEC2:?? IDIVI A4,^D10???????? ; A4=TENS, A5=ONES TO: DEC2:?? CAIG??? A4,^D99???????? ;[T143] After 1999? ???????? JRST?? DEC2A?????????? ;[T143]? Nope, nothing to fix ??????? SUBI??? A4,^D100??????? ;[T143] Reduce by a century ??????? JRST??? DEC2A?????????? ;[T143] Check if in right century DEC2A:? REMARK????????????????? ;[T143] Here when year is in range ??????? IDIVI?? A4,^D10???????? ; A4=TENS, A5=ONES Simple enough.? And then something in the back of my mind started recalling a comment that such fixes wouldn't work after 2052.? A dim memory surfaced about my first DECtape in 1975 (it was a birthday present) that I had to have updated because of something called 'DATE75'. So I went spelunking and here is what DATE75 is all about. Briefly, /very/ early versions of Tops-10 could only handle dates between January 1^st 1964 and January 4^th 1975.?? 3 additional bits were found in the directory and other formats that brought the end date out to February 1^st 2052--a fine hack. Anyway, a number of things broke in 1975 when the first bit started getting used, which is why apparently somebody had to play with my DECtape.? Bugs were also found (times being off by 11 years and four days) in January 8^th 1986 when the 2^nd bit started being used. It may very well be that, despite my kludge to prevent Tops-10 from crashing in November of next year, it may drop dead before the NICE field is expired in 2052. I think it might depend on what overflows in the result of the DATE UUO.? Unfortunately, its format deeply confused me in High School, but maybe I'll have another look after all these year.

4 years, 6 months

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Happy 2021 to everyone

by djm＠wiz.net.au

Happy 2021 to everyone in HECnet land. I hope that it is an eventful and fruitful year for all and that it isn?t as bad as the year we are leaving behind. Cheers, Wiz!! Sent from my iPhone

4 years, 6 months

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PyDECnet and IPv6

by paulkoning＠comcast.net

Why? Because I felt like it and it wasn't too hard. I have a PyDECnet version that can handle not just IPv4 but also IPv6. It's on node PYTHON right now and on the map server 28NH (at akdesign.dyndns.org). This applies both to the web interface and also to the various IP-based datalink protocols. I've tested Multinet, GRE, Ethernet (UDP bridge) and DDCMP. If anyone is interested in using this with PYTHON, let me know. Unfortunately dyndns.org doesn't support IPv6 records well; I can enter one manually but it disappears after a while for reasons I do not understand. It's there now. You can access the mapper's web page (akdesign.dyndns.org:8080) that way if you like. paul

4 years, 7 months

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Generating a note list for pyDECnet

by bob＠jfcl.com

I'm embarrassed that I don't remember this, but somebody had a way to generate a HECnet node name and address list in a format compatible with pyDECnet. How did that work again? Thanks, Bob

4 years, 7 months

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PCVMS

by supratim＠riseup.net

Hi It appears once upon a time there was some sort of a VMS-like shell on DOS called PCVMS from Wendin Software. Sampsa asked for it from the last person to work on it 11 years ago at http://personallyinteresting.blogspot.com/2009/04/computer-archeology.html Wondering if Sampsa or anyone has floppy images. Thanks. -- Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT 39.19151 N, 77.23432 W QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet

4 years, 7 months

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VMS Cluster Group Number Coordination

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

Do VMS cluster group numbers need to be coordinated on HECnet? If so, is anybody taking care of the coordination yet? I'm getting ready to set up a VAX cluster in my little patch of area 2. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> https://www.nf6x.net/

4 years, 7 months

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Cheap Monthly SEO plans %domain%

by supportk＠cheapseosolutions.co

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4 years, 7 months

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AXPBox

by supratim＠riseup.net

Not sure if you guys knew about this emulator forked off ES40, but looks promising enough. https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_… --- Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT 39.19151 N, 77.23432 W QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet

4 years, 7 months

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DECnet for Linux Bug Fixes

by john＠forecast.name

Recently I have found, and fixed, a number of bugs in the DECnet for Linux kernel module. Some of these bugs may be relevant for members of this mailing list who are using DECnet for Linux, especially on a Raspberry Pi. Major bugs fixed: - Ethernet Listen Timer was not implemented In addition, the check for an address change for the designated router (DR) was missing although there was a check if the DR?s priority had changed. Note: this code changes the format of /proc/net/decnet_dev to include the listen timer value. nml/nml2 needs to be rebuilt to understand the changed format. - System panic when using the loopback device (lo) The DECnet code was missing a destructor routine which is used to avoid data copying. - The neighbour (adjacent node) code could be broken by kernel changes The code made use of a now deprecated feature (zero length array at the end of a structure) in order to access data in a surrounding structure. This happened to work ?by chance? until kernel 5.4.42 on 32-bit processors. - Interrupt message flow control was broken The flow control was a mixture of using the SEND/DONTSEND status of the data subchannel and a message count. This seems to work between Linux systems but is broken when communicating with other systems - during the life of a logical link, the remote system could only send a single interrupt message while the Linux system could pretty much send as many interrupts as it wanted possibly overrunning the remote systems buffers. - Optional data on received connect confirm message was corrupted The code was getting the optional data from the wrong offset in the message. - Next hop cache problem 30 seconds after a logical link was taken down, the next hop cache entry was deleted. As part of this deletion, the link was taken ?down? which caused a neighbour entry to be created for the same node address but accessed via the loopback device. Sometimes this would cause the designated router to become accessible via the loopback device and subsequent connections would fail. - Intra-ethernet bit ignored The intra-ethernet bit in the routing flags is ignored on inbound traffic. If there was a neighbour entry for the remote node at connection time, everything would work correctly. If there wad no entry, all outbound traffic would be sent through the designated router for the duration of the logical link. - Promiscuous mode alters DECnet behaviour If the ethernet NIC used for DECnet had promiscuous mode enabled (e.g. using tcpdump for traffic tracing), the DECnet code would start seeing endnode hello?s, populating neighbour structures and causing the problems described above for the intra-ethernet bit to go away. New programs: DECnet Test Send and DECnet Test Receiver (DTS/DTR) Test programs created via reverse engineering the protocol exchanges. Used to find a number of the bugs described above. NML2 New implementation of the Network Management Listener. Supports SUMMARY, STATUS and CHARACTERISTICS for NODES, CIRCUITS and AREAS. It does not support LINKS and OBJECTS which were in the old version but are system specific operations which were only visible from DECnet-VMS systems. The old version is still the default during installation. The new version can be installed by: cd dnprogs/nml2 make sudo make install which will overwrite the installed executable and man page. OS Support: As of 06/29/2020 the code has been tested with: Raspbian 2020-05-27 release with kernels 4.19.126 and 5.4.44 (32-bit only) Pi OS 2020-05-27 32-bit release with kernel 4.19.126 and 5.4.44 pI OS 2020-05-27 (fully updated on 06/26/2020) with kernel 5.4.49 The source code and installation instructions are available at: <https://github.com/JohnForecast/RaspbianDECnet <https://github.com/JohnForecast/RaspbianDECnet>> John.

4 years, 8 months

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Guest access to a VMS IA64 server on HECnet?

by Keith.Halewood＠pitbulluk.org

Hi, Are there any owners of IA64-based VMS servers on HECnet with either some sort of guest access, or willing to give/loan me a guest account so that I can compile a pascal program or two? I'm interested in the sort of code produced (PASCAL/LIST/MACHINE_CODE) and also more generally interested in the 'feel' of VMS running on such a beast anyway. I go to say or type O___VMS but it seems that only the VMS bit makes it out. Regards Keith

4 years, 8 months

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Announcing RPM, a software packet manager for RSX-11M-PLUS

by bqt＠softjar.se

There is SLIP... ;-) I have never tried the SLIP code, but I did write it. It could be an interesting test... (I also have the skeleton of PPP, but I have not completed that one...) But anything on a beaglebone or whatever will not really help. You need some kind of interface on the PDP-11 side either way. Ethernet is the obvious first choice, but serial lines is (I guess) the next best thing. Serial DECnet or serial IP don't make much difference, except I think you'd find serial IP more useful in the long run. Once you have even that, you could run DECnet over IP if you wanted to join in a DECnet sense. Johnny On 2020-10-25 18:24, Chris Zach wrote: > I *really* need to find a DEQNA and get tcp/ip running on my 11/83. This > system is feeling lonely. Unless.... Is there a Decnet to TCP/IP > beaglebone code out there that I could use to peer up to MAGICA? > > CZ > > On 10/24/2020 1:40 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote: >> RPM is a packet manager for RSX (it has nothing to do with the Red Hat >> Packet Manager, except the name). >> >> I don't post regularly about this software, nor about updates to the >> list of available packages, but enough work have been done, and a long >> enough time have passed since the initial announcement that an update >> can be useful for various people. >> >> >> Since the initial release of RPM, a lot of improvements have been done >> to it, and a lot of packages have been updated or added. For anyone >> running RSX-11M-PLUS, I would really recommend installing RPM, and using >> it to get the latest version of various software. >> >> For information on how to install and use it, see >> http://mim.update.uu.se/rpm.htm >> >> >> The current list of packages: >> >> In? Pkg??????? Ver???? Desc >> ?? --? ---??????? ---???? ---- >> ?????? RPM??????? Y0.27?? The RSX Packet Manager >> ?????? MKE??????? V1.31?? The Unix-like make tool >> ?????? TCPIP????? V2.5??? TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS >> ?????? C????????? 000012? PDP-11 C compiler >> ?????? CRTL?????? V1.2??? PDP-11 C runtime library >> ?????? F77??????? T5.4??? FORTRAN-77 compiler >> ?????? F77RTL???? V5.4??? FORTRAN-77 runtime library >> ?????? BP2??????? V2.7C?? BASIC+2 compiler and interactive environment >> ?????? BP2RTL???? V2.7C?? BASIC-PLUS-2 runtime library >> ?????? C81??????? V3.1??? COBOL-81 compiler >> ?????? C81RTL???? V3.1??? COBOL-81 runtime library >> ?????? BCPL?????? BCPL04? The DECUS BCPL compiler >> ?????? FORTH????? V1.3.3? FORTH language for RSX-11M-PLUS >> ?????? SORT?????? V3.0??? SORT/MERGE for RSX >> ?????? DBG??????? T2.2.1? PDP-11 Symbolic Debugger >> ?????? DTR??????? V03.03? DATATRIEVE-11 for RSX >> ?????? FMS??????? V02.2?? FMS-11 for RSX >> ?????? NEMA?????? Y0.32?? The small portable Emacs-compatible editor >> ?????? TECO?????? V40.00? The Text Editor and COrrector (and language) >> ?????? TIN??????? V1.7??? Task INformation tool >> ?????? ATT??????? V01???? File attribute manipulation tool >> ?????? GREP?????? 000007? Tool to search through text files >> ?????? MORE?????? 2.17??? Interactive text file viewer (VTL) >> ?????? NTAIL????? X0.2??? Text file tail printout >> ?????? ERR??????? X0.2??? Display error messages based on codes >> ?????? USH??????? X0.2??? Unix shell like pipes >> ?????? KERMIT???? T3.63?? The KERMIT file transfer program >> ?????? RNO??????? 2000.1? The BONNER Lab RUNOFF document processor >> ?????? SRD??????? 6.9.2?? The DECUS directory maintenance tool >> ?????? COD??????? V1.5??? File encoder/decoder >> ?????? SWATCH???? V01.01? Stop watch for commands >> ?????? SYM??????? V1.1??? Examine symbols in OBJ and STB files >> ?????? VTL??????? V01.0?? Virtual Terminal Log utility >> ?????? ORCAM????? V01.7?? Object file disassembler >> ?????? DOB??????? V2.2??? Object file disassembler >> ?????? CLEACD???? V7.12?? The Command Line Editor ACD >> ?????? CCL??????? V9.3??? User configurable Command Line Interpreter >> ?????? CURSES???? X0.1??? A Unix compatible curses library for PDP-11 C >> ?????? ZEMU?????? V1.24?? The Z-machine emulator >> ?????? DUNGEON??? V3.2C?? The classic dungeon >> ?????? ADVENT???? 03MAR?? The classic adventure game >> ?????? MILLE????? V1.5??? The Mille Bournes card game >> >> >> Yes, this now includes various layered software from DEC, prebuilt for >> M+ I/D systems. I have lots of more software that I intend to add, but >> this is already starting to become a significant list. >> >> ????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, 8 months

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Third Release of Route20 User Mode DECnet Router

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

Hello Everyone, As some of you may be aware, I have been writing my own DECnet router. Since the last formal release a few years ago I have added a few things, the details are here https://github.com/rjarratt/Route20. These were all on the Dev branch, which I know a few people have tried. I have been running the Dev branch for a long time myself, so I am sure it is stable. All I have done really is make the current Dev branch "official" by merging it to the master branch. I know Paul has been much more active than me lately on this front, so I am probably a bit behind, but if anyone would like to take a look that would be great. Regards Rob

4 years, 8 months

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Announcing RPM, a software packet manager for RSX-11M-PLUS

by bqt＠softjar.se

RPM is a packet manager for RSX (it has nothing to do with the Red Hat Packet Manager, except the name). I don't post regularly about this software, nor about updates to the list of available packages, but enough work have been done, and a long enough time have passed since the initial announcement that an update can be useful for various people. Since the initial release of RPM, a lot of improvements have been done to it, and a lot of packages have been updated or added. For anyone running RSX-11M-PLUS, I would really recommend installing RPM, and using it to get the latest version of various software. For information on how to install and use it, see http://mim.update.uu.se/rpm.htm The current list of packages: In Pkg Ver Desc -- --- --- ---- RPM Y0.27 The RSX Packet Manager MKE V1.31 The Unix-like make tool TCPIP V2.5 TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS C 000012 PDP-11 C compiler CRTL V1.2 PDP-11 C runtime library F77 T5.4 FORTRAN-77 compiler F77RTL V5.4 FORTRAN-77 runtime library BP2 V2.7C BASIC+2 compiler and interactive environment BP2RTL V2.7C BASIC-PLUS-2 runtime library C81 V3.1 COBOL-81 compiler C81RTL V3.1 COBOL-81 runtime library BCPL BCPL04 The DECUS BCPL compiler FORTH V1.3.3 FORTH language for RSX-11M-PLUS SORT V3.0 SORT/MERGE for RSX DBG T2.2.1 PDP-11 Symbolic Debugger DTR V03.03 DATATRIEVE-11 for RSX FMS V02.2 FMS-11 for RSX NEMA Y0.32 The small portable Emacs-compatible editor TECO V40.00 The Text Editor and COrrector (and language) TIN V1.7 Task INformation tool ATT V01 File attribute manipulation tool GREP 000007 Tool to search through text files MORE 2.17 Interactive text file viewer (VTL) NTAIL X0.2 Text file tail printout ERR X0.2 Display error messages based on codes USH X0.2 Unix shell like pipes KERMIT T3.63 The KERMIT file transfer program RNO 2000.1 The BONNER Lab RUNOFF document processor SRD 6.9.2 The DECUS directory maintenance tool COD V1.5 File encoder/decoder SWATCH V01.01 Stop watch for commands SYM V1.1 Examine symbols in OBJ and STB files VTL V01.0 Virtual Terminal Log utility ORCAM V01.7 Object file disassembler DOB V2.2 Object file disassembler CLEACD V7.12 The Command Line Editor ACD CCL V9.3 User configurable Command Line Interpreter CURSES X0.1 A Unix compatible curses library for PDP-11 C ZEMU V1.24 The Z-machine emulator DUNGEON V3.2C The classic dungeon ADVENT 03MAR The classic adventure game MILLE V1.5 The Mille Bournes card game Yes, this now includes various layered software from DEC, prebuilt for M+ I/D systems. I have lots of more software that I intend to add, but this is already starting to become a significant list. 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, 8 months

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Announcing TCP/IP V2.5 for RSX-11M-PLUS

by bqt＠softjar.se

Time for a new release announcement of TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS. Since I have now started to try and properly number releases, this is release V2.5 of BQTCP/IP. It's been five months since the last official update, and there been various smaller improvements. Highlights: . Improved startup scripts making the whole process more safe. . Performance improvements in many places. . Added LPR protocol to LPT symbiont spooler. Detailed information on things that have been done since the last release: Startup: . If CEX does not exist, try to load XE: driver automatically. If IPAPPL is executed but there is no IP: loaded, exit immediately. IP: . Added class broadcast address handling. TCP: . Added PU.ACK as an option on TCP ports. . Improved TCP ACK strategy. . Improved default TCP configuration. . Improved TCP push handling. Only set PSH on last packet of sequence of packets included in push. . Corrected reads from TCP. Under some circumstances, read could return IE.NLN on a closed socket, when it should have returned IE.EOF. . Improved TCP fast retransmit logic. . Bugfix in TCP. Make sure congestion window never goes below MSS. . Rewritten the TCP congestion avoidance and slow start logic. . Impoved TCP window update logic. . Reworked TCP MSS logic to better handle if MSS is asymetric. . Improve TCP retry logic in case of remote side constantly ACKing old data. Connection should eventually be closed. DNS: . Added handling of zero length domain names in DNS. FTP/FTPD: . Improved FTP and FTPD push strategy. . Added port number to host string in FTPD login message. . Changed FTP client to probe for RSX system to after login. (Some Linux ftp servers are broken, and gives multiple responses to commands given before logging in.) . Reworked FTP client ETA computation. . Added check in FTP if run from VT device, and disable progress bar. . Improved error handling in FTPD. . Bugfix in FTP. Under some circumstances, a successful GET could end up deleted the received file. (Reported by Ludwig Tauer) TELNET/TELNETD: . Modified telnet server to use PU.ACK. . Improved TELNET and TELNETD push strategy. . Bugfix in telnet client. It could loose input terminal characters in some circumstances. . Bugfix in telnet client. It could get into a state where it stopped reading from the terminal. LPT: . Added LPR protocol to LPT. MAIL: . Improved network reject error handling in MAIL11 sending. . Changed mail queue output format. . In MAIL, make sure addresses are properly reformatted when receiving mails over MAIL11. . In MAIL, when sending over SMTP, strip any DECnet part of destination address. Does not make sense to keep that. . Added SMTP Source domain logical name for outgoing mails. . Improved mail headers content. 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. For the RSX fixes to be applied, it is necessary to answer yes to the question about installing RSX patches. Otherwise those fixes will not be installed. This does not lead to any failures, but it might lead to some components running exactly the way you might be expecting (such as daemons running under the wrong user). 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 (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, 8 months

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[simh] Decnet8: Who has any knowledge about this product and has seen it actually working in whatever versions? Cross post from Hecnet --> @John

by R.Voorhorst＠swabhawat.com

@John Forecast: Hi John, The oddity is just the other way around ?. The release date of the primitive software, say Phase-I+ is dated at 8-april-1977. The Nip printout is dated 28-dec-1976 which aligns with your story. So why ship something clearly broken with an obvious simple bug that should have been easily catched with a minor level of release quality control. When the Pdp8 development was dropped around may-1977, why not release the current stuff instead? Some form of date editing in the software was clearly done on package level as the date 8-apr-77 appears all over the place, but why for a product at that time already 1-3 years ago? Best regards, Reindert From: simh at groups.io [mailto:simh at groups.io] On Behalf Of John Forecast Sent: Thursday, 22 October, 2020 17:23 To: simh at groups.io Subject: Re: [simh] Decnet8: Who has any knowledge about this product and has seen it actually working in whatever versions? Cross post from Hecnet On Oct 19, 2020, at 6:07 PM, R_Voorhorst <simh at swabhawat.com <mailto:simh at swabhawat.com> > wrote: The following oddities ? amongst more - can be seen: 1. The date is 28-dec-76, the various edit dates in the current software are all centered on april/may-77. 2. Ddcmp is dated 7-apr-77 with version 1A, the doc mentiones already 4B 3. KL8 ISR is versioned 3A while the current available version is 1A and dated at 8-apr-77 4. And then the Nip version V1 as documented is older than the V1C version of the internet release!! If these dates are correct it?s unlikely this code is Phase II. Phase II design was mostly done in 1976 (maybe late 1975) with protocol design along with prototype code running standalone on various PDP-11?s. In January 1977 a group was constituted in the Mill to develop networking products (mostly DECnet) for RSX-11M/S/D/IAS, RT-11 and the PDP-8 (I joined that group in late January 1977). In early May, there was an off-site meeting to finalize the API?s that the RSX systems would use - running code wasn?t available for another 4 or 5 months. Around that May timeframe the PDP-8 development was dropped, I don?t know if it was cancelled or transferred back to the OS group (as later happened with RT-11). As Johnny pointed out it?s more likely to be a snapshot of the Phase II development specs from late 1976 - bug fixes/changes were happening all through the summer of 1977. John. And there are a lot more things going on. So the bottom question remains: has anyone seen the internet versions working or is there a clobber up between an advanced laboratory (Phase-II??) version as documented (look at the Ddcmp versions) and a preleased or prior old Decnet version. And if so, can anything be retrieved or is it lost forever. Best regards, RV _._,_._,_ _____ Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#223) <https://groups.io/g/simh/message/223> | Reply To Group <mailto:simh at groups.io?subject=Re:%20Re%3A%20%5Bsimh%5D%20Decnet8%3A%20Who%20has%20any%20knowledge%20about%20this%20product%20and%20has%20seen%20it%20actually%20working%20in%20whatever%20versions%3F%20Cross%20post%20from%20Hecnet> | Reply To Sender <mailto:john at forecast.name?subject=Private:%20Re:%20Re%3A%20%5Bsimh%5D%20Decnet8%3A%20Who%20has%20any%20knowledge%20about%20this%20product%20and%20has%20seen%20it%20actually%20working%20in%20whatever%20versions%3F%20Cross%20post%20from%20Hecnet> | Mute This Topic <https://groups.io/mt/77669945/4811914> | New Topic <https://groups.io/g/simh/post> Your Subscription <https://groups.io/g/simh/editsub/4811914> | Contact Group Owner <mailto:simh+owner at groups.io> | Unsubscribe <https://groups.io/g/simh/leave/8621341/991916336/xyzzy> [simh at swabhawat.com] _._,_._,_

4 years, 8 months

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Decnet8: Who has any knowledge about this product and has seen it actually working in whatever versions?

by R.Voorhorst＠swabhawat.com

L.S. Currently I am finishing testing for the release of the last member of the Pdp8 series computers: Simh Pdp8a with some new devices (and some from old not present in Ppd8). Current state of affairs is, that it is running Os8 V3S 128k monitor and the Kt8 diagnostics and is stable. Also F4 runs and basic Rts8 V2b and V3. The last hurdle is to activate Decnet8 as the last test station to really load a Pdp8 with some realistic real time work. However ?. Activating Decnet8 leads to a lot of funny but nasty surprises and is tedious at best. Basic software can be found on the internet with only 2 flavors of Nip and Nsp which differ only slightly. The setup, assembling and loading is easy enough, though Nip02 uses a thing that is only available in Rts8 V3 exec although it was released for V2b. That should be catched with prerelease testing. The initial point is already, that the Ddcmp lines are not starting up automatically. Looking in the code there are pointers to things with temp status or not implemented, like the STRTUP function code in Nsp which might be needed to startup the lines. There are quite some discrepancies between current available Decnet8 and the documentation in Decnet8.pdf as can be seen with the Nip report: According to the Decnet8 doc copyrighted in 1977, the example display of status looks as follows: 4.5 SAMPLE NIP PRINTOUT The following is a typical NIP printout: NETWORK INFORMATION PROGRAM V1 PHYSICAL LINE STATUS [DDCMP V4B] LINE NODNAM (#) STATE DRIVER VRSN UP SINCE 0 ACTON (3) ON-LINE KL8J 3A 8:03:35 28-DEC-76 1 MAYNRD (2) OFF-LINE DKC8 2B 2 CONCRD (5) STARTING LOCAL 15A LOGICAL LINK STATUS [NSP VllE] CHAN STATE LINE TASK SRCE-NAME[PPN] TYPE LINK DEST-NAME[PPN] TYPE LINK 1 IN-USE 0 12 TARZAN[6,0] 10 4 JANE [3,1] 7 6 2 WAKING 1 3 DONALD[2,2] 3 3 3 UNUSED 1 3 DUMMY [4,4] 29 14 4 BOOT 2 6 MASS [1,23] 3 44 PHYSICAL LINE ERROR STATUS LINE 0: 3 NAKS WITH HEADER CRC ERRORS 5 NAKS WITH DATA CRC ERRORS 83 NAKS WITH REP ERRORS 1 NAK WITH BUFFER UNAVAILABLE 2 NAKS WITH HEADER FORMAT ERRORS 192 NAKS WITH MESSAGES TOO LONG 100 MSGS WITH HEADER CRC ERRORS 1 MSG WITH REP ERROR 1 MSG WITH DATA OVERRUN 10 MSGS WITH HEADER FORMAT ERRORS 9 MSGS WITH MESSAGES TOO LONG LINE 1: NO ERRORS LINE 2: 3 NAKS WITH DATA OVERRUNS 1 MSG WITH REP ERROR A real printout on the current generated system is as follows: NETWORK INFORMATION PROGRAM V1C PHYSICAL LINE STATUS [DDCMP V1A] LINE NODNAM (#) STATE DRIVER VRSN UP SINCE 0 UNKNOWN***** 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 36 TLK [1,2] 0 0 PHYSICAL LINE ERROR STATUS LINE 0: NO ERRORS 0 MESSAGES TRANSMITTED 0 MESSAGES RECEIVED The following oddities ? amongst more - can be seen: 1. The date is 28-dec-76, the various edit dates in the current software are all centered on april/may-77. 2. Ddcmp is dated 7-apr-77 with version 1A, the doc mentiones already 4B 3. KL8 ISR is versioned 3A while the current available version is 1A and dated at 8-apr-77 4. And then the Nip version V1 as documented is older than the V1C version of the internet release!! And there are a lot more things going on. So the bottom question remains: has anyone seen the internet versions working or is there a clobber up between an advanced laboratory (Phase-II??) version as documented (look at the Ddcmp versions) and a preleased or prior old Decnet version. And if so, can anything be retrieved or is it lost forever. Best regards, RV

4 years, 8 months

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Pathworks for VMS V4.1 kit anywhere ?

by wboerhout＠gmail.com

Hi folks, I have become the proud owner of a VAXmate workstation, with a disk enclosure pizzabox attached. It is working in that it attempts to boot from disk (which fails), and then boots from the network, and I see a load request coming in on my VAX. Now I am looking for the supporting software. It looks like Pathworks V4.1 could be of use. I have tracked a kit PCSACLIENT041 (.A and .B), but it requires the PCSA041 server kit, of which, oddly enough, I do have .B but not .A Is the PCSA041 kit available on HECnet somewhere ? *Wilm*

4 years, 8 months

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tap/tun setup by using nmcli

by fsword007＠gmail.com

Folks, I tried to email to SIMH mailing list but I got delivery failure message. I have some network access problems when it messed configuration up overnight because I can't access any with hostnames but only IP addresses. That cause conflict with network manager service. I successfully set up br0 as permanent setting by using nmcli commands. $ nmcli con add type bridge ifname br0 $ nmcli con add type bridge-slave ifname ens33 master br0 $ nmcli con up br0 I tried to set up tap devices but I kept getting connection failure. SIMH simulator can't access tap devices - no operation permit errors. $ nmcli con add type tun ifname tap0 con-name tap0 mode tap owner `id -u` $ nmcli con add type bridge-slave ifname tap0 con-name tap0 master br0 $ nmcli con up tap0 Does anyone know any successful setup by using nmcli for creating tap devices as permanent configuration? I removed some br0 setup from tap-setup.sh and successfully set up tap devices by using ip commands. My modified tap-setup.sh script here: # Using nmcli for creating br0 device first at once # # $ nmcli con add type bridge ifname br0 # $ nmcli con add type bridge-slave ifname ens33 master br0 # $ nmcli con up br0 # Create the TAP network devices /sbin/ip tuntap add dev tap0 mode tap /sbin/ip link set dev tap0 up /sbin/ip tuntap add dev tap1 mode tap /sbin/ip link set dev tap1 up /sbin/ip tuntap add dev tap2 mode tap /sbin/ip link set dev tap2 up /sbin/ip tuntap add dev tap3 mode tap /sbin/ip link set dev tap3 up # bridge in the tap devices /sbin/brctl addif br0 tap0 /sbin/ip addr flush dev tap0 /sbin/brctl addif br0 tap1 /sbin/ip addr flush dev tap1 /sbin/brctl addif br0 tap2 /sbin/ip addr flush dev tap2 /sbin/brctl addif br0 tap3 /sbin/ip addr flush dev tap3 /sbin/brctl show

4 years, 8 months

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Decnet8: Who has any knowledge about this product and has seen it actually working in whatever versions? -> Pydecnet etc.

by R.Voorhorst＠swabhawat.com

Hi Paul, I have tried your router but it gave some problems on Centos 6.10 to get it running, though at first it ran well but had some routing problems I told you about. I had to do some things to get it up, but later in the process of updating pydecnet, Centos started at a certain point complaining about corrupted kernel. I do not speak Unix very well, so I may well have installed to many basic things to get it running and therewith contaminated something. Point is that with simh logging, I already can see enough about packets interchange, however there is no exchange at all at the moment: it is stone dead. Activating Tlk to force some internal activity leads directly to a halt instruction with not a very illuminating comment as explanation. Injecting a packet from a Vax async ddcmp line leads to reception and discarding of the sync preamble and then a halt instruction for packet fragmentation. Of course I was playing false with it, as the start message had C0 for flags that Decnet8 expects to be a fill, whatever the fill value may have been expected. There I can make use of your product to excite the system somewhat. By the way, the current Decnet8 is imho NOT phase II; I suspect they had it running in the laboratory (viz Ddcmp version 4B versus V1C) and in the spd claiming compatibility with Pdp11 phase-II products, but it probably never got outside the gates. The mixed dates are a mystery but some Dec people should be around with knowledge about this. Moreover, I suppose the main driving force for the Pdp8A with notably the Kt8 was from LSG as the Psdp8a was also an Anf10 workstation (680) though with limited caps. Thanks, Reindert -----Original Message----- From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Paul Koning Sent: Monday, 19 October, 2020 23:27 To: hecnet at update.uu.se Subject: Re: [HECnet] Decnet8: Who has any knowledge about this product and has seen it actually working in whatever versions? > On Oct 19, 2020, at 5:01 PM, R. Voorhorst <R.Voorhorst at swabhawat.com> wrote: > > L.S. > > Currently I am finishing testing for the release of the last member of the Pdp8 series computers: Simh Pdp8a with some new devices (and some from old not present in Ppd8). > > Current state of affairs is, that it is running Os8 V3S 128k monitor and the Kt8 diagnostics and is stable. > Also F4 runs and basic Rts8 V2b and V3. > The last hurdle is to activate Decnet8 as the last test station to really load a Pdp8 with some realistic real time work. Nice! > ... > And there are a lot more things going on. So the bottom question remains: has anyone seen the internet versions working or is there a clobber up between an advanced laboratory (Phase-II??) version as documented (look at the Ddcmp versions) and a preleased or prior old Decnet version. And if so, can anything be retrieved or is it lost forever. I can't help with your detailed questions. But in case it wasn't well known: yes, I believe DECnet/8 is Phase II. That means you need either a Phase II, or Phase III DECnet product to talk to it, or you need PyDECnet. That's Phase IV but unlike the normal case, it supports all the way back to Phase II. It also has detailed packet tracing, so you might find it a useful peer to use for debugging your DECnet/8 system. For example, if DDCMP is giving you trouble you should be able to see what you're receiving from the DECnet/8 system. paul

4 years, 8 months

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RaspberryDECnet for x86/x64 linux system?

by fsword007＠gmail.com

Folks, I was going to install RaspberryDECnet on my Linux VM (running on PC) but is only designed for Raspberry Pi cards. Will they work on x86/x64 linux distros or Ubuntu 20.04? I am waiting for new Pi Case 40 package that I backed on Kickstarter and submitted survey on backerkit soon. I am also getting 2 Pi 4 8GB cards. New Pi Case 40 now provide new SSD slot for larger SSD drives. I did not see any lat login programs on that because it is not part of DECnet kit. Are you still working on LAT login programs and latd daemon server? I have old DECnet for Linux package that includes lat login programs. There is a copy of LAT specification on bitsavers. Thanks, Tim

4 years, 8 months

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Mark Darvill's SNOTRA (22.17)

by supratim＠riseup.net

Hi Mark (Darvill) - by any chance, would you have any pointers to DECnet for RT-11? Regards Supratim -- Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT 39.19151 N, 77.23432 W QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet

4 years, 8 months

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unsubscribe

by poolakb＠gmail.com

-- *Poolak Bandyopadhyay+65-9022-3570*

4 years, 8 months

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How much should you be allowed to shoot yourself in the foot?

by tommytimesharing＠gmail.com

I was updating some of MRC's late changes into my version of PANDA.? A (very) few of these were not documented with a change number, so I had been caught by surprise.? While doing this, I stumbled over some defensive coding that he had put in to keep even an enabled WHEEL or OPERATOR from doing something /Really/ /Bad/. I got to wondering about this, which led me to think about the use of the OPERATOR id, which is analogous to the [1,2] PPN under Tops-10 and maybe having administrator rights under Windows, not as bad as root. Tops-20, like most mainframe operating systems of the day, assumed a trained operations staff (as in trained to "DON'T TOUCH") and a trained systems programming staff.? However, this all-or-nothing approach eventually became more granular with the implementation of SEMI-OPR capability.? I had implemented this at Columbia several years earlier with SC%LOP, or Little Operator capability (this was known colloquially as l'opr.)? We had a number of training issues with our operators (some of them literally could not read), so this allowed them to use Galaxy to mount tapes and paper forms, but nothing more.? PANDA provides administrator capability (SC%ADM) which allows a certain amount of file system administration. The PANDA access control job (ACJ) already puts certain restrictions on OPERATOR, mainly in the area of login.? It occurred to me that the above assumptions concerning training simply are not true in the current hobbyist universe.? You can actually remove OPERATOR (SC%OPR) capability from the OPERATOR id, which will break a rather large number of things.? As a matter of fact, you can delete the OPERATOR id entirely.? I'm not sure you could complete boot up into an sensible state after that; I guess you'd need to turn on debugging and go directly to KDDT to then recreate the id by hand. That's training; maybe Monitor Internals level training... And of course, even trained individuals can do dumb things... (GUILTY!)? So I modified the ACJ further to implement the following policies on a CRDIR% of OPERATOR: 1. May not delete OPERATOR. 2. May not remove SC%OPR from OPERATOR. 3. May not set OPERATOR not login-able * FILES-ONLY * INVALID * CHARGE-LIMITED 4. May not set OPERATOR FTP-ONLY (no way to get to the EXEC; the normal time-sharing user interface) 5. May not set 'junk' (I.E., undocumented) bits in OPERATOR directory protection word 6. May not set OPERATOR directory protection to allow world read, write or connect 7. May not clear the OPERATOR password (set to NUL) If you're winning enough to defeat these restrictions, then maybe you're winning enough to understand the ramifications of doing them. Comments for other DEC OS's?? I don't remember what RSTS, RSX and VMS do.

4 years, 8 months

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KLH10 front-end reload??

by tommytimesharing＠gmail.com

After working on the DTEKPA issue and coming up with a work around, I went searching to see if the problem had ever been reported.? In fact, it had been.?? By me. ? ...Well over a decade ago... Basically, the default behavior for Tops-20 is to note that a front-end counter isn't incrementing and--if on the next check it still hasn't changed--to declare the associated PDP-11 front end down and to initiate a reboot.? This gives the 11 about a millisecond to get its act together before the KL whacks it. Of course, that will never work in KLH10 (see below and previous); you're hung because the KLH10 DTE emulator doesn't implement code to simulate a reboot action, so the KL loops forever looking for the response.? Of course, why would it?? There should be no reason for Tops-20 to ever think its down.?? Seeing as I like writing assembler more than C, I decided not to tweak the KLH10 code (I have tweaked it for other cases and might rethink this). The workaround is to define some additional functions for the BOOT% JSYS to set some variables in resident storage in STG and modify DTESRV to use them.? You can now set an elapsed time to wait before declaring the PDP-11 down.? I default to five minutes of non-incrementing keep-alive. Depending on how hard I am beating on things, the front end 'appears' to go away between anywhere from 5 to 15 seconds. I think probably the real fix is to not depend on an OS interrupt to increment the counter.? A thread should be spawned which uses nanosleep() to bump the counter every 500 microseconds, no matter what the rest of KLH10 might be doing.? KLH10 is already using multiple forks for the disks, tape, NI, Etc. (one reason I've preferred it over SimH), so maybe this won't be a big deal. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From*: Mark Crispin <MRC at Lingling.Panda.COM> > *Subject*: Re: KLH10 front-end reload?? > *To*: Thomas DeBellis <slogin at acedsl.com> > *Date*: Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:20:46 -0800 (PST) > *In-Reply-To*: <4B11CFEA.4020906 at acedsl.com> > *Message-ID*: <alpine.OSX.2.00.0911291100070.245 at hsinghsing.panda.com> > > KLH10 implements enough for the front end DTE protocol for TOPS-20 to > think that it is talking to a front end, albeit one with just a CTY > (no KLINIK, DL11 lines, or DECnet). > > There is a keepalive timer in both TOPS-20 (to reboot the front end > when the front end crashes) and in RSX-11F (to reboot TOPS-20 when it > crashes). > > The front end also keeps time well enough to set TOPS-20's clock > following a crash-reboot; this is superceded in KLH10 as the timebase > instructions get the time from the host OS.? In addition, Panda > monitors try to run a program called TIMCHK which will synchronize > with NTP servers. > > So, what happened was that the DTE protocol stopped for some reason. > TOPS-20 tried to reboot the front end in an attempt to get it going, > but of course that was futile. > > Here's something that may help: > > On some Linux systems the esoteric real-time interrupt mechanisms in > KLH10 don't work well.? So, it may be necessary to set > KLH10_ITIME_SYNC instead of the default KLH10_ITIME_INTRP. Note that > doing so will make KLH10 burn much more CPU on the host system. > > Usually, though, if you need to do this, it becomes pretty obvious at > once, with nasty DTE errors from KLH10 shortly after booting (and any > time you type on the CTY). > > One reason why I haven't upgraded Lingling's host CPU is that most of > the newer machines that I've run KLH10 on have required doing this.? > It's quite annoying. > >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> *From*: Thomas DeBellis <slogin at acedsl.com> >> *Subject*: KLH10 front-end reload?? >> *To*: Tops-20 Wizards <TOPS-20 at lingling.panda.com> >> *Date*: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:35:38 -0500 >> *Message-ID*: <4B11CFEA.4020906 at acedsl.com> >> >> Tommy Timesharing hung earlier today; it had been up over a 175 days. >> I got an error around 1:27PM-EST that the front end had hung and was >> rebooted.? By the time I noticed at 4:08, the system was completely >> wedged. >> >> I couldn't get in on the CTY, but KLH10 appeared to be working. >> However, in the process of poking around, I completely destroyed some >> information, so I am unable to determine exactly what was going on.? >> Sigh... >> >> As I had been up since early June (and the middle of March before >> that because of a power failure), this does not appear to be of >> immediate concern.? The system had not had a single issue during all >> this time (not even a BUGINF) >> >> However ...? Ideas, anyone?? Should I think about getting nervous?? I >> mean, there IS no front-end on KLH10, right? >> ________________________________________________________________________ >> >> ************************************************************************ >> TOPS-20 BUGHLT-BUGCHK >> ?Logged on Sat 28 Nov 2009 13:27:08????? Monitor uptime was 175 days >> 19:54:26 >> ????Detected on system # 3699. >> ????Record sequence number:??? 17527. >> ************************************************************************ >> >> Error information: >> ????Date/Time of error:??? Sat 28 Nov 2009 13:27:05 >> ????Errors since reload:??? 1. >> ????Fork # & Job #:??????? 777777,777777 >> ????User's logged in dir:??? unknown >> ????Program name: >> ????Error:??????????? BUGINF >> ????Address of error:??? 1137031 >> ????Name:??????????? DTEKPA >> ????Description:??????? DTE keep alive fail >> ????CONI APR:??????? 007740,,000003 = No error bits detected >> ????CONI PAG:??????? 000000,,660151 >> ????DATAI PAG:??????? 700101,,002750 >> ????Contents of ACs: >> ???????????? 0:??? 000000,,575700 >> ???????????? 1:??? 777777,,000000 >> ???????????? 2:??? 000000,,000000 >> ???????????? 3:??? 000000,,277242 >> ???????????? 4:??? 000100,,206260 >> ???????????? 5:??? 000000,,247445 >> ???????????? 6:??? 000000,,000000 >> ???????????? 7:??? 000000,,000000 >> ??????????? 10:??? 777775,,000002 >> ??????????? 11:??? 000000,,000000 >> ??????????? 12:??? 000000,,614101 >> ??????????? 13:??? 777772,,000012 >> ??????????? 14:??? 777777,,777650 >> ??????????? 15:??? 777305,,353304 >> ??????????? 16:??? 620012,,000000 >> ??????????? 17:??? 777115,,246540 >> ????PI status:??????? 000000,,000175 >> ????Additional data items:??? 1 >> ??????????????? 000000,,000000 >> >> ????ERA:??????????? 000000,,000000 = word #0 Memory read >> ????Base phyiscal memory >> ???? address at failure:??? 0 >> >> ************************************************************************ >> FRONT END RELOADED >> ?Logged on Sat 28 Nov 2009 13:28:04????? Monitor uptime was 175 days >> 19:55:21 >> ????Detected on system # 3699. >> ????Record sequence number:??? 17528. >> ************************************************************************ >> ????CPU # :,,Front end #:??? 0,0 >> ????Status at reload:???? No error bits detected >> ????Retries:??? 3 >> ????Filename for DUMP: <SYSTEM>0DMP11.BIN.1,28-Nov-2009 13:27:05

4 years, 9 months

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Update computer club

by bqt＠softjar.se

Hey. Update is virtually exhibiting at the VCF Berlin right now. As a part of that, there is a tour of Updates stuff and computers, which people might find amusing. Among other things, you can see Magica (1.1) (a PDP-11/70) for a while, up and running on HECnet. You can see the video at https://wiki.vcfb.de/2020/start?id=en:update 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, 9 months

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