8 Nov
2021
8 Nov
'21
3:27 a.m.
There are a lot of features that I'd to lift from other NFT's and FAL's.
The problem is trying to do the modifications within the existing
architecture.? They've needed a number of modifications to fix bugs,
even to get them up to the point of stability, let alone have the
functionality that I've admired in the other implementations.? The FAL
source went from 25K to 44K of source for stability and debugging fixes,
but also required an additional module of about 98K for the enhancements
(such as ANONYMOUS).
NFT is in fact what I'm in the middle of trying to fix, but that source
is more difficult to work with, largely because it has a parser whereas
FAL didn't have one until I wrote it.
But I don't really like criticizing any of this, even when it does get
me peeved.? Development looks like it was stopped quite abruptly.? It's
almost as if the programmers were yanked away from their keyboards,
which I'm sure at least a few did not appreciate.
On 11/7/21 9:14 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
Hey. Thanks for those additions. Any machines on
HECnet I can check
against?
NFT under RSX have this wonderful functionality that seems to be
missing in all other implementations:
.nft venti2::/id
NFT -- Version V9.0
Local NFARs V8?? DAP V7.1 Buffer size=? 2064. OS=RSX-11M+ FS=FCS-11
DC=Yes
Remote FAL? V2?? DAP V5.6 Buffer size=? 4096. OS=TOPS-20 FS=TOPS-20
DC=Yes
? Johnny
On 2021-11-08 03:04, John Forecast wrote:
On Nov 7, 2021, at 6:17 AM, Johnny Billquist
<bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
Thomas, I'm not sure where you got that list from.
It seems slightly mismatching what I can find. Looking at the NRT
code in RSX (which uses object 23, and is shared by code in RSX for
connecting to both RSTS/E, VMS and Tops-20), I find this:
1? RT-11
2? RSTS/E
3? RSX-11S
4? RSX-11M
5? RSX-11D
6? IAS
7? VMS
Those are the documented values for the configuration message that I
can find.
However, extrapolating from this, in NFT/FAL, there is a much more
extensive list, which seems to align with this list, which contains:
8? TOPS-20
9? Tops-10
10 RTS-8
11 OS/8
12 RSX-11M-PLUS
13 COPOS/11 (TOPS-20 frontend)
14 P/OS
15 VAXELN
16 CP/M
17 MS-DOS
18 Ultrix-32
19 Ultrix-11
20 DTF/MVS
25 Windows NT
26 Linux
Now, Linux is a value I believe I added just based on observation,
so it's much less official. But I think all the other ones are ones
DEC did assign. Unfortunately, I think Windows NT was also added by
me, based on observation of Pathworks. So I do not know what the
values between 20 and 25 could/should be.
The current version of DECnet for Linux I maintain on github uses 192
for Linux which comes from the user-defined space so I could
completely avoid any conflicts with standard implementations. 22 was
for MacOS (the original O/S for the 68K and PowerPC) where DEC resold
a third party implementation (Thursby I think). I don?t remember what
we used for DECnet-SCO but that was another official implementation.
?? John.
But maybe this helps some anyway?
? Johnny
On 2021-11-07 11:23, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
Since its inception, Kermit-20 (one the first
three Kermit
implementations) has had the 'limitation' that it will only talk to
a remote Kermit via a physical terminal line (I.E., something like
TTY6:).? It doesn't do network terminals in part because it has no
code to handle the out-of-band or meta-data that one finds on TVT's
(like IAC's) or CTERM's.
This doesn't exist for the early NRT terminals which were
implemented for Tops-10 and Tops-20.? Once you've read the initial
configuration message and decided what to do, you basically never
have to bother with meta-data.? Because I'm trying to look at an
NFT issue between Tops-10 and Tops-20, I needed another transport
mechanism and modifying Kermit-20 to do DECnet 36 NRT's seemed like
an easy hack.? Since Tops-10 Kermit isn't making an outgoing
connection, it is none the wiser.
Thus far, it has been fairly straightforward.? Right now I'm just
catching the few cases where certain operations don't make sense or
otherwise wouldn't work (like setting the terminal speed). Another
thing I'd like to prevent is Kermit-20 bothering non-36 bit
systems.? This is easily enough done by checking some 'magic' bits
in the initial configuration message and restricting by OS type.?
This raises two questions:
First, is the list below complete?? What about Ultrix and ... what
else?
????? 1??? RSTS? 2??? RT-11? 3??? RSTS/E? 4??? RSX-11S? 5 RSX-11M
????? 6??? RSX-11D? 7??? IAS? 8??? VMS? 9??? TOPS-20 10 TOPS-10
11?????? RTS-8 12??? OS-8 13??? RSX-11M+ 14??? MCB
Second, the configuration isn't well documented.? Actually, I'm not
sure if it's documented, period.? All I have is are some notes that
Johnny wrote up in the process of reverse-engineering it and very
kindly gave me.? They are certainly fine for this particular
implementation, but I was just wondering what else there might be.
Plenty for LAT and CTERM, but I don't think I've stumbled over NRT.
--
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