24 Dec
2019
24 Dec
'19
5:59 p.m.
On Dec 23, 2019, at 5:51 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt
at softjar.se> wrote:
On 2019-12-23 20:24, John Forecast wrote:
Poul took a look at the DECNET-8 sources, and figured it was actually not phase I (I
thought it was phase I as well). Poul thinks it's close to, if not actually phase II.
There are things in there that apparently did not exist in phase I.
Yes, I agree. I just took a look at the code and the early dates match when Phase
I was available (I was using it around the middle of 1976) and the later dates (mid-1977)
would have been when we were finalizing the DECnet-RSX Phase II system architecture. The
code claims to support NSP version 2.2 but I have no way to map that to a particular
phase, only that version 1.0 was dated July 1975 and version 3.1 (Phase III) was dated
March 1978.
John.
On Dec
20, 2019, at 11:21 PM, Thomas DeBellis <tommytimesharing at gmail.com
<mailto:tommytimesharing at gmail.com>> wrote:
Indeed; but there was a time when the PDP-11's 16 bit (64K) address space and eight
register file seemed positively generous. That's when you compare it to the
PDP-8's /single/ accumulator and 12 bit (4K) address space.
I continue to be astounded what they managed to do with that. In addition to a nice
package of languages, with a memory management unit (essentially a bank switcher), they
got the thing to timeshare. That's right; TSS-8. There's one still running at
the Computer History Museum on an 8/I.
So they got DECnet running on the PDP-8? Wow. I wonder how they did that; whether they
re-targeted a BLISS compiler to emit PAL. I remember looking at the source to PDP-8 VT
(video) TECO. Many awe most inspiring kludges. What a tour de force. Very humbling.
That was implemented on RTS-8 and looks like a Phase I implementation - all
hand-crafted PAL code. The floppies are available on the net and includes full source
code. When I joined the DECnet development group in early 1977, there were a couple of
PDP-8 developers as part of the group. I don?t know if they were developing a Phase II
implementation but they disappeared after about 6 months - not surprising given the
difficulties we were having getting it to fit in a 28KW PDP-11. Johnny
--
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