Fred wrote:
On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, Sampsa Laine wrote:
Where should we go from here? Setting up our own virtual X.25 PSDN tunnelled over IP maybe? Something crazy with SNA?
SNA! SNA! :)
I could set up Hercules here running MVS 3.8J ... ;) I'm sure the folks have been able to get SNA to work within the emulator. I set up Hercules and MVS once, but other than a novelty, I really didn't do much with it, because most of my associates wouldn't know a mainframe if it ran them over. I think it would be interesting to get something quasi-public (on HECmet) going.
Plus, I have real IBM mainframe iron.
Peace... Sridhar
Brian Hechinger wrote:
* DECnet for BSD, especially 2.11 PDP-11 bsd. Yes, a 16 bit version is
significantly harder than a 32 bit version, I know, but there are several
real PDP11s out there running BSD that could be on HECnet. I know - I've
got one! We could use the Linux DECnet as a starting point - the dn
userspace utility programs might not even be that hard to port - but we'd
need a kernel wizard to do the tricky bits :-)
I know just the guy. If you are serious about this, please let me know and
I'll see if he's interested in helping out. I think the last time I talked
to him he mentioned about lacking an ethernet controller for his PDP-11.
Anyway, he's a professor for the university I work at. PhD in Neurology of
all things, but he's one hell of a programmer. He wrote kernel patches for
BSD 2.11 (i think, it might have been 2.09) for the PDP-11/73 CPU which it
seems had a bug in it that DEC had patched all their OSes to work around.
Smart cat. Don't know how interested he'd be though. I can always ask.
As usual, it's all about time. I've done a number of patches and small fixes in the kernel of 2.11BSD myself. It's not that magic.
But it requires time, and first of all, you need to have a fairly good understanding of DECnet, which will take some reading, and talking with people. Then you can start thinking about how the API should look like. The concepts in DECnet are slightly different than TCP/IP for instance, so you cannot have an API that looks like the TCP/IP one here, but need to do something else. I suspect it might be a good idea to look how the interface in Ultrix looks like, and try to model it after that.
Johnny
* DECnet for BSD, especially 2.11 PDP-11 bsd. Yes, a 16 bit version is
significantly harder than a 32 bit version, I know, but there are several
real PDP11s out there running BSD that could be on HECnet. I know - I've
got one! We could use the Linux DECnet as a starting point - the dn
userspace utility programs might not even be that hard to port - but we'd
need a kernel wizard to do the tricky bits :-)
I know just the guy. If you are serious about this, please let me know and
I'll see if he's interested in helping out. I think the last time I talked
to him he mentioned about lacking an ethernet controller for his PDP-11.
Anyway, he's a professor for the university I work at. PhD in Neurology of
all things, but he's one hell of a programmer. He wrote kernel patches for
BSD 2.11 (i think, it might have been 2.09) for the PDP-11/73 CPU which it
seems had a bug in it that DEC had patched all their OSes to work around.
Smart cat. Don't know how interested he'd be though. I can always ask.
-brian
--
"Coding in C is like sending a 3 year old to do groceries. You gotta
tell them exactly what you want or you'll end up with a cupboard full of
pop tarts and pancake mix." -- IRC User (http://www.bash.org/?841435)
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 10:26:43AM -0400, Fred wrote:
I thought SNA mostly ran on Token Ring or something?
I have an IBM PS/2 model (something) with both an MCA Token Ring card and
and MCA Ethernet - and I even have a passive Token Ring Mau! (and a cable,
somewhere ...)
Do you need/want a cisco 4500 router and some token ring interfaces? Got
more token ring cards for the 4000 series cisco routers than I know what
to do with. Ok, granted 1 is more than I know what to do with, but I've
got more than that. :)
-brian
--
"Coding in C is like sending a 3 year old to do groceries. You gotta
tell them exactly what you want or you'll end up with a cupboard full of
pop tarts and pancake mix." -- IRC User (http://www.bash.org/?841435)
I can take a look at imaging it. It is RX50 format. I do have a complete set of "orange" binders with updates. I seem to remember that it is four (4) 3-inch binders, but I'll have to check.
-Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE on behalf of Zane H. Healy
Sent: Wed 10/21/2009 10:41
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: RE: [HECnet] Next retro comms project?
At 10:07 AM -0400 10/21/09, Steve Davidson wrote:
I have a DECnet kit for RT-11. From what I remember it is HUGE!
It can not make use of I/D space so at one point RT Engineering stopped
development on it. When I joined the RT group in 1984 I was supposed to
work on DECnet but within a week of me joining they cancelled the project.
I had a hard time understanding why a company that billed itself as
a network connected company would ever cancel such a product! I
wound up doing user-mode utilities and SPR's instead. Yuch!
Any chance you can image the kit and make it available? If it's that
old it's covered by the Supnik license. Do you have documentation?
As I just mentioned in a post, I've been looking for this for years!
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
Bob Armstrong wrote:
re: 2.11bsd DECnet
Performance will be horrible, and it will also probably be very problematic
Not clear whether you mean that in general, or just about the entirely
userspace version.
I don't think a completely user space DECnet implementation is even
possible on a PDP-11 but I don't see why a kernel-integrated version
couldn't be done. 2.11bsd already has TCP/IP networking that works
perfectly well. It's not super fast, but then a PDP-11 (at least if we're
talking about real ones) isn't a super fast machine either. The TCP/IP
speed is on a par with the performance of the rest of the system. We'd
probably have to replace the TCP/IP networking in the kernel with DECnet
because of address space limitations, so it'd be a kernel build choice for
either TCP/IP networking OR DECnet, but I think most people could live with
that.
Well, the TCP/IP for 2.11BSD is all in kernel space...
And the ping times for my TCP/IP under RSX is better than 2.11, if I remember my test right. :-)
No need to replace it. Just add DECnet in parallel.
Johnny
At 10:07 AM -0400 10/21/09, Steve Davidson wrote:
I have a DECnet kit for RT-11. From what I remember it is HUGE!
It can not make use of I/D space so at one point RT Engineering stopped
development on it. When I joined the RT group in 1984 I was supposed to
work on DECnet but within a week of me joining they cancelled the project.
I had a hard time understanding why a company that billed itself as a network connected company would ever cancel such a product! I wound up doing user-mode utilities and SPR's instead. Yuch!
Any chance you can image the kit and make it available? If it's that old it's covered by the Supnik license. Do you have documentation?
As I just mentioned in a post, I've been looking for this for years!
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
This runs over serial (DL, X.25, etc) or parallel links (DR something). So no Ethernet hardware. It predates that by quite a while. Marty Gentry wrote the Ethernet hardware handler (driver) but it was never used for DECnet. DECnet was cancelled right after he finished it.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE on behalf of Zane H. Healy
Sent: Wed 10/21/2009 10:36
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: RE: [HECnet] Next retro comms project?
At 6:55 AM -0700 10/21/09, Bob Armstrong wrote:
* DECnet for RT11. This is easier at least, because DEC actually sold
such a product, but I don't know if actual kits and documentation for it
still exists. In either case, I've got PDP-11s and PDP-8s that could be on
HECnet if they had networking software.
As many know finding a copy of this has been a goal I've had for a
*LONG* time. I know of one person that might a copy, but last I
heard, couldn't get to where the floppies were and didn't have time.
Keep in mind this doesn't run over Ethernet.
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
re: 2.11bsd DECnet
Performance will be horrible, and it will also probably be very problematic
Not clear whether you mean that in general, or just about the entirely
userspace version.
I don't think a completely user space DECnet implementation is even
possible on a PDP-11 but I don't see why a kernel-integrated version
couldn't be done. 2.11bsd already has TCP/IP networking that works
perfectly well. It's not super fast, but then a PDP-11 (at least if we're
talking about real ones) isn't a super fast machine either. The TCP/IP
speed is on a par with the performance of the rest of the system. We'd
probably have to replace the TCP/IP networking in the kernel with DECnet
because of address space limitations, so it'd be a kernel build choice for
either TCP/IP networking OR DECnet, but I think most people could live with
that.
Bob
I forgot about the SNA product for Windows NT 3.51/4.0. I have a couple of those kits hanging around. I don't have the SNA hardware but I do have the software.
Any takers? I certainly don't need them?
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE on behalf of Jason Stevens
Sent: Wed 10/21/2009 10:33
To: hecnet at update.uu.se
Subject: Re: [HECnet] Next retro comms project?
Microsoft SNA server works pretty well for that, and it's easy to find...
Many moons ago I had TONNES of machines setup in that kind of manner, with
type 1 token ring to boot! (4mbit).
Even with Windows NT 3.51 & 4.0 it worked surprisingly well. (SNA Server 2.x
was waaay better then 3.x & 4.x IMHO). Anyways it was easy to connect the
tokenring to the FEP, but later on we got cisco routers that would do
translational bridging and local ack so we moved our SNA servers to
ethernet only.. Just remember to flip the bits of the FEP address as the
endian is different from ethernet to tokenring.
I've also done the netware SNA gateway, but it was living hell to setup... I
doubt I could get it to work again...
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 10:26 AM, Fred <fcoffey at thrifty.misernet.net> wrote:
On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, Sampsa Laine wrote:
I thought SNA mostly ran on Token Ring or something?
I have an IBM PS/2 model (something) with both an MCA Token Ring card and
and MCA Ethernet - and I even have a passive Token Ring Mau! (and a cable,
somewhere ...)
Now if I could just find that gateway software. When I had access to a
real mainframe, all of the PC's went through a handful of these PS/2's via
Ethernet, and the PS/2's had token ring cards in them connected to a real
FEP.
Fred
