<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Sep 6, 2018, at 4:47 PM, Jeffrey H. Johnson <<a href="mailto:jhj@trnsz.com" class="">jhj@trnsz.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" class=""><div dir="auto" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><span class=""></span></div><div dir="ltr" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><span class=""></span></div><div dir="ltr" class=""><div dir="ltr" class="">On Sep 6, 2018, at 4:41 PM, Zane Healy <<a href="mailto:healyzh@avanthar.com" class="">healyzh@avanthar.com</a>> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8" class="">Very cool! I just got my Multics system up and running this last Sunday. I was a systems analyst on DPS-8 mainframes running GCOS-8 from ’90-93. I’ve come to the conclusion that not only is that knowledge all evaporated from my head, it also wouldn’t really help with Multics. :-)</div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Oh no, a stinkin' GCOS user! Just kidding, of course. While we aren't running the GCOS Daemon for batch/absentee GCOS processes (mainly because nobody has asked!), gtss, the interactive GCOS TSS simulator does work, if you happen to have any GCOS tasks you'd like to run. </div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>I’ve gotten into the GCOS TSS simulator on my Multics system, but that’s about the extent.</div><div><br class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div dir="auto" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">How on earth did you manage to hook Multics up to HECnet?</div></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">It's a hugely abusive hack. Since the DECnet for Linux code is written in C, and the FNP emulation is a C simulation of the FNP/MCS behavior, I've taken advantage of that to simulate a hardwired protocol converter. This also means that rather than having to (re-)implement much of the networking code in obscure MAP355/Level 6 assembly language, the off-loaded networking code which would run on the FNP can run essentially natively on the host. (The overall long-term goal, however, is eliminating host-based services and 'properly' emulating the Level 6 FNP at the instruction level.)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">We a use additional emulated hardware infrastructure such as emulated terminal servers to ease management, balance connections between FNPs, etc.</div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>I vaguely remember taking a course on, I believe the DataNet-8000 (we had DataNet-8’s). In my mind, the FNP's were part of what made a DPS-8 an impressive system. I’m not convinced that how you’ve achieved this is the wrong way to go, quite the opposite. </div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div dir="auto" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class=""><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);" class="">In other cases there is Multics software which is essentially 'extinct' but various descendants still exist, so we are working on backporting/crossporting the existing software versions back to Multics - this includes programming languages like XPL and SNOBOL, software packages like REDUCE, MACSYMA, OMNITAB, TeX, etc. </span></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>Any sign of the Ada compiler? Though I gather it was a pretty poor imitation. One thing I want to do is find my K&R C book, and see how the C compiler handles things. I was working on learning C when I first started working at the DPS-8 installation I was at, and the C Compiler we had was atrocious to put it kindly.</div><div><br class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div dir="auto" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">Feel free to review our system news (pmotd -a) to get an idea of what we've been working on!</div></div></div></div></blockquote><br class=""></div><div>I logged back in this morning and reviewed that, a most impressive effort.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Zane</div><div><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><br class=""></body></html>