25 Feb
2020
25 Feb
'20
9:14 p.m.
What issues had you encountered talking to Tops-20??
If you are using the SIMH emulator for a KS processor, then the latest
version of Tops-20 you can run is 4.2, which I believe will do Phase
III.? Since there was never any Ethernet adapter for the KS (it was a
massbus device), I believe you must speak DDCMP, which we used with
KMC's, which would do 56Kbs.? There was a slower adaptor for 9.6Kbs, but
the name escapes me at the moment.
I've had little trouble with Tops-20 V7 DECnet; that is, once I got it
to working.? When I was modifying FAL/DAP to accept anonymous transfers,
I and and others beat on it quite a lot to wring the bugs out.? These
regression tests were against another 20, RSX 11M+ (or whatever MIM:: is
running) and a couple of Vaxen.? The operating system level code was
robust; no crashes.
We found some interesting bugs; I think my favorite was RSX wanting all
capital letters for months and Tops-20 sending capitalized months, so
file dates got messed up.? There were others, but they took some effort
to remediate; so, not so favorite...
On 2/25/20 1:38 PM, Rob Jarratt wrote:
Mine has been built to be portable (it is in C). I have it running on
Windows, Debian and FreeBSD. I have not tried on VMS, but I did do a
partial port to VAXELN. I don?t foresee great difficulties getting it
to run on VMS. It looks like I may have done some partial VMS work,
but it has been a while since I looked. I could look into
reviving/continuing that if there is interest.
Mine won?t talk to TOPS10/20, yet. I started something on that too if
I remember correctly, I did build a DDCMP implementation which I think
partially worked. I think I foundered on just getting DECnet running
on TOPS20 on SIMH, I did some work with Mark Pizzolato and Timothe
Litt to build a KDP emulation, but I struggled to keep up with them
and gave up in the end. I am not sure where that went.
I need a bit of time to work out what my status is I think as it has
been a while.
Regards
Rob
*From:*owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE <owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE> *On
Behalf Of *Robert Armstrong
*Sent:* 25 February 2020 14:42
*To:* hecnet at Update.UU.SE
*Subject:* [HECnet] Multinet alternatives ...
?? What are the alternatives for bridging DECnet systems across the
Internet that don?t require any special hardware and can be self
hosted on OpenVMS/VAX?
? I?m aware of Paul?s Python router, but I didn?t think it ran on a
VAX.? Am I wrong about that?? Is there a Python for OpenVMS/VAX?? I
believe there?s a port for AXP but I didn?t know about one for VAX.
? And I saw Rob mentioned his user mode DECnet router.? Same questions
? what environment does that require?? ?And I saw mention it being
both Multinet and simh DDCMp compatible ? will it talk to a simh
KS10/TOPS10/DMR ?
Bob