I was in touch with Lars recently, talking with him about putting
Chaosnet back into the PANDA distribution as a number of programs (such
as the mailer and FTP) know how to use it.? I also wanted to put the VTS
(SUPDUP) service back in, too.
I've spent some looking at the code and I believe there were two
different Tops-20 implementations, one for the KL which ran on XX and
EECS and /maybe/ another that ran on the 2020.? ITS uses that hardware
configuration.? I don't remember anything about OZ, I don't think it was
on the 9th floor, at least not when I was hanging out there.
I'm not sure if the IBMSPL software had extensive usage.? Earlier
versions of it were /very/ cantankerous, but it improved.? I knew one of
the authors at Marlboro (K. Reti) who I thought was one of the more
brightest bulbs I had come across.? Columbia used IBMSPL extensively,
but not for the reasons you'd think.
In addition to routing CCnet (DECnet) email to the ARPAnet, we also
routed the _entirety_ of BITnet, which was a 'network' of IBM mainframes
that sent email to each other.? It wasn't SNA, they all looked like RJE
workstations and 'punched' card decks of email to each other.? I think
our news feed may have come through IBMSPL too.
In other words, that particular software was beat on day and night and
eventually functioned quite competently.? I keep thinking about putting
that up, too, although I don't know how I'd get the PDP-11 code working
(or what it might talk to)
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On 11/7/21 7:02 PM, Peter Lothberg wrote:
MIT Chaos on a KL uses a DN20 for the Ethernet
communications (an
NI not being available at the time)
For Chaosnet on tops20, for example OZ was runing "Minits" on the
front end and the chaos interface is a
MIT-Special Unibus device.? 1822 was spoken with a LH-DH interface.
(For those who don't knew, Chaos was a LAN technology using 75 ohm
cable and 3 Mbit and it had
?16 bit addresses, 8 bit for network and host each.)
Chaos over Ethernet came way later..
Sorry for leaving out DN60, thought it was irrelevant for most users...