On Nov 7, 2021, at 9:27 PM, Thomas DeBellis
<tommytimesharing at gmail.com> wrote:
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.
After phase IV was completed most of the DECnet-Ultrix group was redirected to work on
DECnet-OSI (Phase V) which was a huge development - basically a reimplementation of
everything. The DECnet-RSX mostly moved on to other groups, thereb was no way to squeeze
Phase V onto a PDP-11.
John.
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
>>
>