5 Jul
2019
5 Jul
'19
8:57 p.m.
Yes and No.? Some of the design concepts are quite similar which is
unsurprising.
The NICE task on Tops-20 has a named object called NCU.? The (fork)
listener is NMLT20 which will also accept local (and cluster) IPCF%
communications.? In OPR, you enter NCP submode, which parses nearly the
exact same command set as NCPACP. ? It then (via Orion) sends this to
NMLT20 which performs the action (or crashes) or sends it to another NCU
(or crashes).
So that sounds analogous to NCPACP to NICE.TSK architecture. Remind me
how RSX does the inter-task communication?? I haven't programmed it
since 1977...? I remember it being different from IPCF%, but still
thought it was neat.
There is no permanent store in Tops-20 for this DECnet information.? It
is scattered through various configuration files that are swallowed
depending on criticality during boot up an operation.? Tops-20 does
*not* like having either the MAC address nor the local DECnet node
number numbers changed, ever and configuration for router and local area
must be done 'early' and once only; so all that stuff is in
SYSTEM:7-1-CONFIG.CMD.? You have to reboot to get changes updated.
Other stuff (like setting the executor identification) and enabling
services goes into SYSTEM:SYSTEM.CMD where OPR hands it to NMLT20.
There is much to be learned by comparing the architectures.
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On 7/4/2019 2:37 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
NETACP in RSX (and I suspect VMS) is just the process/program that
implements a lot of the DECnet protocols. It is actually pretty much
not related to anything here.
At least in RSX, the NICE protocol is handled by a separate task
called NICE.TSK.
And when you run NCP under RSX, it pretty much talks to NICE for any
operations requested, also for the local node.
I know that this is very different from how things work under TOPS-20.
There are no handling of objects from NCP using NICE in TOPS-20, and
there is no permanent database (as far as I know), compared to RSX or
VMS.
? Johnny
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On 2019-07-04 03:06, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
Tops-20 has a subtly different architecture, in part perhaps
reflective of the previously described 'bolt on'.
The closest thing to NETACP is NMLT20, which implments NCU. Parts of
that are in written BLISS and at one point, it had a shared a partly
common code base with some RSX/VAX stuff. Interfacing to Galaxy (the
Tops-10/Tops-20 Operator Interface and Queuing system), NMLT20 was
/notorious/ for crashing in early (Phase III) releases.? I wrote many
SPR's...
I can't define objects. FAL itself puts up the FAL object and speaks
DAP over it.? Communication with it is either over a DECnet FAL
object (via DAP) or with Tops-20 IPCF.? The only messages that gets
are (the largely useless) logging messages from inferior FAL
processes and checkpoint messages from Quasar, the queue manager.? It
doesn't process any other messages from Galaxy, so it doesn't seem
that it would know how to swallow anything that NMLT20 might hand off.
I can define the following:
??? CIRCUIT
??? EXECUTOR
??? KNOWN
??? LINE
??? LOGGING
??? MODULE
??? NODE
I'll see what I turn up when I finish polishing off that pesky DAP
bug (after I finish the VIKING OCR).
Lots for you to look forward when you get back into it, eh? :-D
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> On 7/3/2019 5:34 PM, Robert Armstrong wrote:
>
> > I'll have a look at FAL; at first glance it has no hooks for a
> default account
>
> It?s probably handled by NETACP, or whatever passes for that on
> TOPS20.? Does your NCP understand the command
>
> DEFINE OBJECT FAL USER <whatever> PASSWORD <whatever>
>
> Bob
>