12 Mar
2023
12 Mar
'23
5:12 p.m.
On 2023-03-12 16:39, Johnny Billquist wrote:
That is still true, though. TALK won't really be very useful for most
people around here. You'd still need to write whatever you wanted to
have that PDP-8 talk over DECnet. And there is rather limited things you
could do in the context of RTS-8.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
On 2023-03-12 15:53, Robert Armstrong wrote:
Right.
Actually, I just remembered that there is one client and server task
included, and that is the TALK/LISTEN. Sortof makes sense, since you
might want the operator to be able to communicate with operators on
other systems.
Johnny
Billquist <bqt(a)softjar.se> wrote:
The sources for DECNET-8 can be found. And you need to run RTS-8 for it.
And it can only talk DDCMP, so you need a serial line connection.
The manuals for the whole thing can also be found online. But there is
very little beyond the basic framework. You were expected to write your
own tasks that the communicated over DECnet under RTS-8.
Exactly - there are no applications for DECnet-8, not even the
"standard" ones. There's no FAL, no NML, no CTERM/RTERM, nothing. If you
want it to do anything you have to write an RTS application to do that. Also
it's not clear to me that DECnet-8 was ever actually
"finished". I don't think DEC ever got around to actually selling it, and
I've never heard an example of anyone getting it working.
I'd say it looks very finished, have an SPD
(http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/spd/06.01.01_7705_DECNET8.pdf), manuals,
and the software. (And I've been over the software multiple times. I've
also run RTS-8 in the past, out of curiosity...)
But I do not know of anyone using it. But I must also admit that most
PDP-8 stuff was gone by the time I was at DEC.
If you want to put a PDP-8 on HECnet I think a
more practical plan
would be hook up the console serial line to a VAX or PDP-11, andthen create a pass thru
where you can log into the host machine (with user name PDP8?) and it just connects you to
that serial line.
I'd say it's definitely more practical, as you could then use some OS
that actually allows you to do something more interactive.