5 Nov
2021
5 Nov
'21
12:30 a.m.
A kind soul sent me a TOPS-20 V4.1 SIMH disk a while ago with basic information, and
that's what I use for my Phase II testing. It has in its <DECNET> directory
some sources: NETCON bits, NFT, DAP.
I also realized there's a DECnet-20 V2 (Phase II) user manual on Bitsavers, which
combines programming and management documentation. It mentions that Phase II NCP has a
NICE protocol just like the later versions, except that it doesn't seems to be
compatible. At least my NICE listener doesn't like what it hears. Something else to
play with at some point.
paul
On Nov 4, 2021, at 5:23 PM, Thomas DeBellis
<tommytimesharing at gmail.com> wrote:
Where did you get that NETCON from? I don't have it.
Or is a Tops-10 NETCON? (which I wouldn't have, either)
>
> On 11/4/21 3:22 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
>
> I found the code, it's in NETCON (specifically, NCP). So now all I have to do is
reverse engineer it. That's going to be interesting because I haven't looked at
Macro-10 in 45 years, and even back then I didn't really know it well at all.
>
> paul
>>
>> On Oct 28, 2021, at 9:26 AM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net>
<mailto:paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> I'm guessing it has to do with learning the shape of the Phase II network.
That's an entirely different problem than Phase III and later. The connect is by
name, so object 0, object name TOPOL. And I don't have anything to answer that
request so I have no trace. I suppose I could build a dummy responder just to see what
question is asked.
>>
>> If indeed it's Phase II topology related, it would make sense for the host
not to have that server, and of course it would also go away in Phase III. The host
requests, but does not offer, "intercept" which is node name based routing in
Phase II that was implemented only in a few places. Somewhere I saw that it exists only
to get past the front end (on larger machines) which was handled as a separate node so it
counts as a network hop. Without intercept, Phase II only goes a single hop.
>>
>> I found the code, it's in NETCON (specifically, NCP). So now all I have to
do is reverse engineer it. That's going to be interesting because I haven't
looked at Macro-10 in 45 years, and even back then I didn't really know it well at
all.
>>
>> paul
>>>
>>> On Oct 27, 2021, at 9:32 PM, Thomas DeBellis <tommytimesharing at
gmail.com> <mailto:tommytimesharing at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> TOPOL? Hmm... No, I hadn't heard of that, either. It sounds almost
familiar, but I don't know why Tops-20 would be asking for it because it doesn't
appear to be serving it, viz:...