One can speculate on a number of reasons for this, my top two guesses
are that DEC was rapidly evolving the protocol and yet hadn't converged
on the degree of productization it would have on the PDP8 platform (what
PDP-8 OS was this?)
I don't know what wasn't wound down except VMS and Digital Unix (n?e
Ultrix).? I had heard that DEC walked away from the PDP-15 so abruptly
that "customers didn't even realize it had happened" or something along
those lines.
Under Tops-20, there are all sorts of extremely interesting hooks for
DECnet functionality.? For example, the file system was being modified
to hold DECnet nodes, user names and passwords.? There are hooks for an
NFT: device and one assumes that this would have implemented a kind of
transparent file access.? A lot of stuff doesn't appear to have been
fully production ready; there are a number of issues with DAP, for
example.? One assumes a UETP suite for DECnet might have caught this.
And all those nifty PDP-11 OS's!!
Sigh; I have COBOL and assembler programs that I wrote (on punched
cards) as a student in the 1970's that will still execute just fine on
z/OS (n?e MVS) and z/VM.? I oversee development under z/TPF, which some
assembler modules going back to the the early 1980's.
To say that JCL is not intuitive is not to do its arcane, obfuscated
syntax true justice.? And it's all very 3270 half-duplex terminals
(simulations), blah.? Yet, there's something to be said for reverse
compatibly.? None of my (very early) Windows programs will work
anymore.? A number of my Unix programs still will.
On 10/22/20 3:43 PM, R. Voorhorst wrote:
@John Forecast:
Hi John,
The oddity is just the other way around ?.
The release date of the primitive software, say Phase-I+ is dated at
8-april-1977.
The Nip printout is dated 28-dec-1976 which aligns with your story.
So why ship something clearly broken with an obvious simple bug that
should have been easily catched with a minor level of release quality
control.
When the Pdp8 development was dropped around may-1977, why not release
the current stuff instead?
Some form of date editing in the software was clearly done on package
level as the date 8-apr-77 appears all over the place, but why for a
product at that time already 1-3 years ago?
Best regards,
Reindert
*From:*simh at groups.io [mailto:simh at groups.io] *On Behalf Of *John Forecast
*Sent:* Thursday, 22 October, 2020 17:23
*To:* simh at groups.io
*Subject:* Re: [simh] Decnet8: Who has any knowledge about this
product and has seen it actually working in whatever versions? Cross
post from Hecnet
On Oct 19, 2020, at 6:07 PM, R_Voorhorst <simh at
swabhawat.com
<mailto:simh at swabhawat.com>> wrote:
The following oddities ? amongst more - can be seen:
1. The date is 28-dec-76, the various edit dates in the current
software are all centered on april/may-77.
2. Ddcmp is dated 7-apr-77 with version 1A, the doc mentiones
already 4B
3. KL8 ISR is versioned 3A while the current available version is
1A and dated at 8-apr-77
4. And then the Nip version V1 as documented is older than the
V1C version of the internet release!!
If these dates are correct it?s unlikely this code is Phase II.
Phase II design was mostly done in 1976 (maybe late 1975) with
protocol design along with prototype code running standalone on
various PDP-11?s. In January 1977 a group was constituted in the
Mill to develop networking products (mostly DECnet) for
RSX-11M/S/D/IAS, RT-11 and the PDP-8 (I joined that group in late
January 1977). In early May, there was an off-site meeting to
finalize the API?s that the RSX systems would use - running code
wasn?t available for another 4 or 5 months. Around that May
timeframe the PDP-8 development was dropped, I don?t know if it
was cancelled or transferred back to the OS group (as later
happened with RT-11).
As Johnny pointed out it?s more likely to be a snapshot of the
Phase II development specs from late 1976 - bug fixes/changes were
happening all through the summer of 1977.
? John.
And there are a lot more things going on. So the bottom question
remains: has anyone seen the internet versions working or is there
a clobber up between an advanced laboratory (Phase-II??) version
as documented (look at the Ddcmp versions) and a preleased or
prior old Decnet version. And if so, can anything be retrieved or
is it lost forever.
Best regards,
RV
_._,_._,_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Groups.io Links:
You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#223) <https://groups.io/g/simh/message/223> |
Reply To Group
<mailto:simh at
groups.io?subject=Re:%20Re%3A%20%5Bsimh%5D%20Decnet8%3A%20Who%20has%20any%20knowledge%20about%20this%20product%20and%20has%20seen%20it%20actually%20working%20in%20whatever%20versions%3F%20Cross%20post%20from%20Hecnet>
| Reply To Sender
<mailto:john at
forecast.name?subject=Private:%20Re:%20Re%3A%20%5Bsimh%5D%20Decnet8%3A%20Who%20has%20any%20knowledge%20about%20this%20product%20and%20has%20seen%20it%20actually%20working%20in%20whatever%20versions%3F%20Cross%20post%20from%20Hecnet>
| Mute This Topic <https://groups.io/mt/77669945/4811914> | New Topic
<https://groups.io/g/simh/post>
Your Subscription <https://groups.io/g/simh/editsub/4811914> | Contact
Group Owner <mailto:simh+owner at groups.io> | Unsubscribe
<https://groups.io/g/simh/leave/8621341/991916336/xyzzy>
[simh at
swabhawat.com]
_._,_._,_