[simh] Decnet8: Who has any knowledge about this product and has seen it actually working in whatever versions? Cross post from Hecnet --> @John
22 Oct
2020
22 Oct
'20
9:43 p.m.
@John Forecast:
Hi John,
The oddity is just the other way around ?.
The release date of the primitive software, say Phase-I+ is dated at 8-april-1977.
The Nip printout is dated 28-dec-1976 which aligns with your story.
So why ship something clearly broken with an obvious simple bug that should have been
easily catched with a minor level of release quality control.
When the Pdp8 development was dropped around may-1977, why not release the current stuff
instead?
Some form of date editing in the software was clearly done on package level as the date
8-apr-77 appears all over the place, but why for a product at that time already 1-3 years
ago?
Best regards,
Reindert
From: simh at groups.io [mailto:simh at groups.io] On Behalf Of John Forecast
Sent: Thursday, 22 October, 2020 17:23
To: simh at groups.io
Subject: Re: [simh] Decnet8: Who has any knowledge about this product and has seen it
actually working in whatever versions? Cross post from Hecnet
On Oct 19, 2020, at 6:07 PM, R_Voorhorst <simh at swabhawat.com <mailto:simh at
swabhawat.com> > wrote:
The following oddities ? amongst more - can be seen:
1. The date is 28-dec-76, the various edit dates in the current software are all centered
on april/may-77.
2. Ddcmp is dated 7-apr-77 with version 1A, the doc mentiones already 4B
3. KL8 ISR is versioned 3A while the current available version is 1A and dated at
8-apr-77
4. And then the Nip version V1 as documented is older than the V1C version of the internet
release!!
If these dates are correct it?s unlikely this code is Phase II. Phase II design was mostly
done in 1976 (maybe late 1975) with protocol design along with prototype code running
standalone on various PDP-11?s. In January 1977 a group was constituted in the Mill to
develop networking products (mostly DECnet) for RSX-11M/S/D/IAS, RT-11 and the PDP-8 (I
joined that group in late January 1977). In early May, there was an off-site meeting to
finalize the API?s that the RSX systems would use - running code wasn?t available for
another 4 or 5 months. Around that May timeframe the PDP-8 development was dropped, I
don?t know if it was cancelled or transferred back to the OS group (as later happened with
RT-11).
As Johnny pointed out it?s more likely to be a snapshot of the Phase II development specs
from late 1976 - bug fixes/changes were happening all through the summer of 1977.
John.
And there are a lot more things going on. So the bottom question remains: has anyone seen
the internet versions working or is there a clobber up between an advanced laboratory
(Phase-II??) version as documented (look at the Ddcmp versions) and a preleased or prior
old Decnet version. And if so, can anything be retrieved or is it lost forever.
Best regards,
RV
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22 Oct
22 Oct
10:14 p.m.
On Oct 22, 2020, at 3:43 PM, R. Voorhorst
<R.Voorhorst at swabhawat.com> wrote:
@John Forecast:
Hi John,
The oddity is just the other way around ?.
The release date of the primitive software, say Phase-I+ is dated at 8-april-1977.
The Nip printout is dated 28-dec-1976 which aligns with your story.
So why ship something clearly broken with an obvious simple bug that should have been
easily catched with a minor level of release quality control.
When the Pdp8 development was dropped around may-1977, why not release the current stuff
instead?
Some form of date editing in the software was clearly done on package level as the date
8-apr-77 appears all over the place, but why for a product at that time already 1-3 years
ago?
My memory must be fading, because the Phase I vs. Phase II discussion Johnny referred to
doesn't ring bells.
Given that you have actual software and it's approaching running status, we'll
soon know by examination. As soon as you start making NSP connections, it's very
clear. This is where Phase I and Phase II are different and incompatible.
paul
10:30 p.m.
Christmas Eve, 2019 :)
On Dec 24, 2019, at 8:56 PM, Paul Koning
<paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
I?ve never seen a Phase I protocol spec but DECnet/8 was probably closer to Phase
I than Phase II although the dates in the source code appear to cover both phases. Even
after Phase II development started the protocols were still being updated - datagram
service was still in the NSP spec in early 1977 but was dropped about half way through the
development cycle. One advantage we had for DECnet-RSX development (11M/11S/11D and IAS)
was that they all shared common protocol processing code, which had been written for an
earlier advanced development project, so protocol changes were relatively easy to make.
John.
---
Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT
39.19151 N, 77.23432 W
QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet
On Dec 24, 2019, at 11:59 AM, John Forecast
<john at forecast.name> wrote:
A while ago I found a Phase I RTS-8 document that describes the protocol in reasonable
detail. It's clear that Phase I has only a vague resemblance to the later protocols.
For example, the NSP protocol is there, but it's seriously different. For example, it
offers both a connection service and a datagram service. And various other things work
entirely differently than the later versions. So while Phase III and IV can talk to Phase
II NSP with no real trouble, there is no way for any of them to make sense out of what a
Phase I node is saying.
If you have source code, it should be pretty obvious if it's Phase I or Phase II from
looking at the NSP packet formats.
On Dec 23, 2019, at 5:51 PM, Johnny Billquist
<bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
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. On 2019-12-23 20:24, John Forecast wrote:
> ...
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.
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.
On Oct 22, 2020, at 4:14 PM, Paul Koning
<paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
On Oct 22, 2020, at 3:43 PM, R. Voorhorst
<R.Voorhorst at swabhawat.com> wrote:
@John Forecast:
Hi John,
The oddity is just the other way around ?.
The release date of the primitive software, say Phase-I+ is dated at 8-april-1977.
The Nip printout is dated 28-dec-1976 which aligns with your story.
So why ship something clearly broken with an obvious simple bug that should have been
easily catched with a minor level of release quality control.
When the Pdp8 development was dropped around may-1977, why not release the current stuff
instead?
Some form of date editing in the software was clearly done on package level as the date
8-apr-77 appears all over the place, but why for a product at that time already 1-3 years
ago?
My memory must be fading, because the Phase I vs. Phase II discussion Johnny referred to
doesn't ring bells.
Given that you have actual software and it's approaching running status, we'll
soon know by examination. As soon as you start making NSP connections, it's very
clear. This is where Phase I and Phase II are different and incompatible.
paul
24 Oct
24 Oct
1:48 a.m.
One can speculate on a number of reasons for this, my top two guesses
are that DEC was rapidly evolving the protocol and yet hadn't converged
on the degree of productization it would have on the PDP8 platform (what
PDP-8 OS was this?)
I don't know what wasn't wound down except VMS and Digital Unix (n?e
Ultrix).? I had heard that DEC walked away from the PDP-15 so abruptly
that "customers didn't even realize it had happened" or something along
those lines.
Under Tops-20, there are all sorts of extremely interesting hooks for
DECnet functionality.? For example, the file system was being modified
to hold DECnet nodes, user names and passwords.? There are hooks for an
NFT: device and one assumes that this would have implemented a kind of
transparent file access.? A lot of stuff doesn't appear to have been
fully production ready; there are a number of issues with DAP, for
example.? One assumes a UETP suite for DECnet might have caught this.
And all those nifty PDP-11 OS's!!
Sigh; I have COBOL and assembler programs that I wrote (on punched
cards) as a student in the 1970's that will still execute just fine on
z/OS (n?e MVS) and z/VM.? I oversee development under z/TPF, which some
assembler modules going back to the the early 1980's.
To say that JCL is not intuitive is not to do its arcane, obfuscated
syntax true justice.? And it's all very 3270 half-duplex terminals
(simulations), blah.? Yet, there's something to be said for reverse
compatibly.? None of my (very early) Windows programs will work
anymore.? A number of my Unix programs still will.
On 10/22/20 3:43 PM, R. Voorhorst wrote:
@John Forecast:
Hi John,
The oddity is just the other way around ?.
The release date of the primitive software, say Phase-I+ is dated at
8-april-1977.
The Nip printout is dated 28-dec-1976 which aligns with your story.
So why ship something clearly broken with an obvious simple bug that
should have been easily catched with a minor level of release quality
control.
When the Pdp8 development was dropped around may-1977, why not release
the current stuff instead?
Some form of date editing in the software was clearly done on package
level as the date 8-apr-77 appears all over the place, but why for a
product at that time already 1-3 years ago?
Best regards,
Reindert
*From:*simh at groups.io [mailto:simh at groups.io] *On Behalf Of *John Forecast
*Sent:* Thursday, 22 October, 2020 17:23
*To:* simh at groups.io
*Subject:* Re: [simh] Decnet8: Who has any knowledge about this
product and has seen it actually working in whatever versions? Cross
post from Hecnet
On Oct 19, 2020, at 6:07 PM, R_Voorhorst <simh at swabhawat.com
<mailto:simh at swabhawat.com>> wrote:
The following oddities ? amongst more - can be seen:
1. The date is 28-dec-76, the various edit dates in the current
software are all centered on april/may-77.
2. Ddcmp is dated 7-apr-77 with version 1A, the doc mentiones
already 4B
3. KL8 ISR is versioned 3A while the current available version is
1A and dated at 8-apr-77
4. And then the Nip version V1 as documented is older than the
V1C version of the internet release!!
If these dates are correct it?s unlikely this code is Phase II.
Phase II design was mostly done in 1976 (maybe late 1975) with
protocol design along with prototype code running standalone on
various PDP-11?s. In January 1977 a group was constituted in the
Mill to develop networking products (mostly DECnet) for
RSX-11M/S/D/IAS, RT-11 and the PDP-8 (I joined that group in late
January 1977). In early May, there was an off-site meeting to
finalize the API?s that the RSX systems would use - running code
wasn?t available for another 4 or 5 months. Around that May
timeframe the PDP-8 development was dropped, I don?t know if it
was cancelled or transferred back to the OS group (as later
happened with RT-11).
As Johnny pointed out it?s more likely to be a snapshot of the
Phase II development specs from late 1976 - bug fixes/changes were
happening all through the summer of 1977.
? John.
And there are a lot more things going on. So the bottom question
remains: has anyone seen the internet versions working or is there
a clobber up between an advanced laboratory (Phase-II??) version
as documented (look at the Ddcmp versions) and a preleased or
prior old Decnet version. And if so, can anything be retrieved or
is it lost forever.
Best regards,
RV
_._,_._,_
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_._,_._,_
3:25 p.m.
Most things PDP-11 was left around, and eventually sold to Mentec. So
obviously more than just VMS and Ultrix stayed around. With DECnet, it
wasn't until phase IV that the torch was firmly passed on to VMS, and
RSX started playing catchup instead of leading.
Digital Unix didn't show up until Alpha, and it's a very different thing
to Ultrix.
But the PDP-8 went slightly sideways. First of all, DECnet8 was for
RTS-8, which was a realtime system. Slightly reminding of RSX, but a
completely different thing. It was not a generic environment to the same
extent as most operating systems. More embedded.
The thing is, DECnet really pushed the PDP-8. The biggest issue is just
memory. The extension from 4K to 32K happened already in the 60s, and by
the late 70s, 32K was not much to play with any more.
There was a 128K extension made for the PDP-8, but that never saw much
sales. By then, the PDP-8 was pretty much in decline for general
computing anyway, and the PDP-11 was just so much better, even if it was
more expensive.
So, no real surprise that they decided to stop DECnet development for
the PDP-8. I suspect not that many licenses were ever sold. Even RTS-8
itself was a bit more niche already.
The PDP-8 instead ended up as the platform for word processing for a
while at DEC. Which was a very different target, and for which DECnet
(at that time) was not at all that relevant. Not to mention the problems
of squeezing it all in, as it grew...
Johnny
On 2020-10-24 01:48, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
One can speculate on a number of reasons for this, my
top two guesses
are that DEC was rapidly evolving the protocol and yet hadn't converged
on the degree of productization it would have on the PDP8 platform (what
PDP-8 OS was this?)
I don't know what wasn't wound down except VMS and Digital Unix (n?e
Ultrix).? I had heard that DEC walked away from the PDP-15 so abruptly
that "customers didn't even realize it had happened" or something along
those lines.
Under Tops-20, there are all sorts of extremely interesting hooks for
DECnet functionality.? For example, the file system was being modified
to hold DECnet nodes, user names and passwords.? There are hooks for an
NFT: device and one assumes that this would have implemented a kind of
transparent file access.? A lot of stuff doesn't appear to have been
fully production ready; there are a number of issues with DAP, for
example.? One assumes a UETP suite for DECnet might have caught this.
And all those nifty PDP-11 OS's!!
Sigh; I have COBOL and assembler programs that I wrote (on punched
cards) as a student in the 1970's that will still execute just fine on
z/OS (n?e MVS) and z/VM.? I oversee development under z/TPF, which some
assembler modules going back to the the early 1980's.
To say that JCL is not intuitive is not to do its arcane, obfuscated
syntax true justice.? And it's all very 3270 half-duplex terminals
(simulations), blah.? Yet, there's something to be said for reverse
compatibly.? None of my (very early) Windows programs will work
anymore.? A number of my Unix programs still will.
On 10/22/20 3:43 PM, R. Voorhorst wrote:
>
> @John Forecast:
>
> Hi John,
>
> The oddity is just the other way around ?.
>
> The release date of the primitive software, say Phase-I+ is dated at
> 8-april-1977.
>
> The Nip printout is dated 28-dec-1976 which aligns with your story.
>
> So why ship something clearly broken with an obvious simple bug that
> should have been easily catched with a minor level of release quality
> control.
>
> When the Pdp8 development was dropped around may-1977, why not release
> the current stuff instead?
>
> Some form of date editing in the software was clearly done on package
> level as the date 8-apr-77 appears all over the place, but why for a
> product at that time already 1-3 years ago?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Reindert
>
> *From:*simh at groups.io [mailto:simh at groups.io] *On Behalf Of *John Forecast
> *Sent:* Thursday, 22 October, 2020 17:23
> *To:* simh at groups.io
> *Subject:* Re: [simh] Decnet8: Who has any knowledge about this
> product and has seen it actually working in whatever versions? Cross
> post from Hecnet
>
> On Oct 19, 2020, at 6:07 PM, R_Voorhorst <simh at swabhawat.com
> <mailto:simh at swabhawat.com>> wrote:
>
> The following oddities ? amongst more - can be seen:
>
> 1. The date is 28-dec-76, the various edit dates in the current
> software are all centered on april/may-77.
>
> 2. Ddcmp is dated 7-apr-77 with version 1A, the doc mentiones
> already 4B
>
> 3. KL8 ISR is versioned 3A while the current available version is
> 1A and dated at 8-apr-77
>
> 4. And then the Nip version V1 as documented is older than the
> V1C version of the internet release!!
>
> If these dates are correct it?s unlikely this code is Phase II.
> Phase II design was mostly done in 1976 (maybe late 1975) with
> protocol design along with prototype code running standalone on
> various PDP-11?s. In January 1977 a group was constituted in the
> Mill to develop networking products (mostly DECnet) for
> RSX-11M/S/D/IAS, RT-11 and the PDP-8 (I joined that group in late
> January 1977). In early May, there was an off-site meeting to
> finalize the API?s that the RSX systems would use - running code
> wasn?t available for another 4 or 5 months. Around that May
> timeframe the PDP-8 development was dropped, I don?t know if it
> was cancelled or transferred back to the OS group (as later
> happened with RT-11).
>
> As Johnny pointed out it?s more likely to be a snapshot of the
> Phase II development specs from late 1976 - bug fixes/changes were
> happening all through the summer of 1977.
>
> ? John.
>
> And there are a lot more things going on. So the bottom question
> remains: has anyone seen the internet versions working or is there
> a clobber up between an advanced laboratory (Phase-II??) version
> as documented (look at the Ddcmp versions) and a preleased or
> prior old Decnet version. And if so, can anything be retrieved or
> is it lost forever.
>
> Best regards,
>
> RV
>
> _._,_._,_
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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--
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
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