12 Mar
2023
12 Mar
'23
4:26 a.m.
On 3/11/2023 9:47 PM, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
Columbia was the BITNET/Internet/CCnet gateway for the
first third of
the 1980's. I was the systems programmer who maintained the 20's IBM
RJE entry software (IBMSPL) as well as the DN60 (PDP-11) front end HASP
and bi-sync drivers, one of the reasons being that I knew 360 assembler
and PDP-11 macro.
There is a global hobbyist BITNET II network, with the central host
called IRLEARN in Ireland. IMPVAX is connected to it as well as HECnet.
There are quite a few DEC machines on that network, too. It is fun to
send commands and files and do a bunch of Q SYS and CPQ XYZ.
$ send/command irlearn "q sys"
$
(IRLEARN) - LINK ADMIN INACTIVE
$
(IRLEARN) - LINK IPVAX INACTIVE
$
(IRLEARN) - LINK IEGBOX INACTIVE
$
(IRLEARN) - LINK CCVAX INACTIVE
$
(IRLEARN) - LINK IRTCCARL INACTIVE
$
(IRLEARN) - LINK IRUCCIBM INACTIVE
$
(IRLEARN) - LINK UKACRL INACTIVE
$
(IRLEARN) - LINK PRTRSCS INACTIVE
$
(IRLEARN) - LINK BTP CONNECT -- LINE 038 NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK CEIRE INACTIVE
(IRLEARN) - LINK SCOTTY INACTIVE
$
(IRLEARN) - LINK KEWTORIA CONNECT -- LINE 040 NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK KEWRONI CONNECT -- LINE 041 NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK AEARN CONNECT -- LINE 042 NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK MOSHIX ACTIVE -- LINE 043 NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK IMPVAX CONNECT -- LINE 044 NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK NCCMAX CONNECT -- LINE 045 NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK N00DLE CONNECT -- LINE 046 NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK ETEXAS INACTIVE
(IRLEARN) - LINK VMF CONNECT -- LINE 048 NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK FRIWVM01 CONNECT -- LINE 049 NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK WABMVS CONNECT -- LINE 04A NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK PJJV0 CONNECT -- LINE 04B NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK MISERVM INACTIVE
(IRLEARN) - LINK THCHVM01 INACTIVE
(IRLEARN) - LINK CEARN CONNECT -- LINE 04E NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK TANJPVM1 INACTIVE
(IRLEARN) - LINK CRNI01 ACTIVE -- LINE 04F NOH
(IRLEARN) - LINK FAKE ACTIVE -- LINE 036 NOH
At the time, I believe BITNET had some absurd number of IBM 'hosts'; I
recall the number being something like 12,000. Whatever it was, it was
eye popping. I think it was world-wide.
This was pre-SNA/LU 6.2, by the way, so they all looked like RJE
workstations and communicated by 'punching' decks of cards to each
other. So there were no interactive services, but a large amount of
work was done via batch (still is via TSO), so most of the time you
didn't notice any real difference.
Personally, I vastly preferred editing my JCL with Emacs instead of
Xedit. If it were a choice between TECO and Xedit, it depended on what
kind of mood I was in.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 3/11/23 9:32 PM, Robert Armstrong wrote:
How big was BITNET? When I was at DEC Easynet had around 5000 nodes. I heard that
it topped out at somewhere around 50,000 in the early 90s, but that was after my time.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Thomas DeBellis<tommytimesharing(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The thing that was gigantic was BITNET, back in the day.
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