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

On Oct 19, 2020, at 4:58 PM, R. Voorhorst <R.Voorhorst at 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

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)

with limited caps. Thanks, Reindert -----Original Message----- From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-

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

has seen it actually working in whatever versions? >> On Oct 19, 2020, at 5:01 PM, R. Voorhorst

Pdp8 series computers: Simh Pdp8a with some new devices (and some

not present in Ppd8). the Kt8 diagnostics and is stable. load a Pdp8 with some realistic real time work. Nice! > ... > And there are a lot more things going on. So the bottom question

has anyone seen the internet versions working or is there a clobber up between an advanced laboratory (Phase-II??) version as documented (look

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