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<p>I never heard of DECnet on SCO, but we ran Ultrix on the first
(8650) and second (8700) VAX's which we got at the data center for
instructional use. My last use of SCO in the early 2000's
timeframe struck me as a product that was behind the times. It
still didn't have some features that Ultrix had; Linux and Digital
Unix (1990's Alpha) had far passed it by.<br>
</p>
<p>As I recall, Ultrix would accept <font size="+1"><tt>node"user
password account"::</tt></font>, the account being necessary
because the 20's ran real accounting. I don't remember the
functionality being used much. Since we got burned with the
cancellation of the 2080, we were not inclined to get locked into
Digital anything, so no LAT anything. For terminals, we had an
alternate hardware solution (Gandalf PACX) which was more flexible
in some ways that could also connect to our IBM mainframes. For
files, the vastly additional functionality of DAP was never
leveraged; we stuck with FTP. We discouraged <font size="+1"><tt>node"user
password account"::</tt></font> as this would allow shoulder
surfing. We may have modified some of the Ultrix source to refuse
this nomenclature.</p>
<p>Shortly after we got an 8700, we got our first SPARC and
essentially exited any Digital solution afterwards. DEC tried
very hard to keep the account; we got a large number of
micro-vaxes, Pro-350's and the like. I had a micro-vax (running
Ultrix) for about 8 months before I left and I thought it quite a
reasonable little box. The Pro-350's weren't really appreciated,
this perhaps mostly due to the strange keyboard which didn't have
common keys where they have been for decades. In retrospect, I
wonder about that as the keyboard wasn't any stranger than an IBM
3270, which I also used to tweak the HASP (PDP-11) code on the VM
side.</p>
<p>I also used that functionality with our IBM system programmer
staff troubleshoot IBMSPL when it got cranky, which happened a lot
in early releases. That surprised me as I had known one of the
authors (K. Reti) at Marlboro and he had always struck me as
pretty brilliant. But I was young and impressionable.</p>
<p>I'm not sure what happened with CCnet after the Columbia data
center got out of the Digital. We had at least one VAX 11/780 on
campus (Chemistry), but I don't know what they did. Digital had
better luck with Stevens; for a time, every undergraduate was <u>required</u>
to buy a 350 in order to be able to do homework and graduate.</p>
<p>What's strange is what has lasted. To this day, you can sign on
to IBM mainframe and the only terminal that is supported is a
3270, half duplex. They all speak IP6 and HTTPS and everything
else, but if you are going to write a program under TSO...<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/5/20 8:09 AM, Johnny Billquist
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:38c45f39-e15e-e951-6b39-f261fda05d9c@softjar.se">On
2020-03-04 20:59, John Forecast wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">On Mar 3, 2020, at 10:38 PM, Robert
Armstrong <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:bob@jfcl.com"><bob@jfcl.com></a> wrote:
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">The area.node notation, and the Phase
3 numeric address notation, were
<br>
intended to be standard, not just limited to NCP. And
indeed DECnet/E
<br>
(in RSTS) does both:
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
FWIW, VMS accepts all three notations too - e.g. ZITI::,
2.16:: and
<br>
2064::. It also accepts the node"name password":: notation as
well.
<br>
Actually I thought this was a standard thing in all "modern"
(i.e. Phase IV)
<br>
implementations. Are there systems that don't?
<br>
<br>
And the VMS parser doesn't limit the node name to 6
characters, so you can
<br>
say "63.1023::" (although HECnet has no such node).
<br>
<br>
Bob
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Here’s a few more:
<br>
<br>
DECnet-RSX
<br>
<br>
Kernel interface requires a node name (up to 6 characters)
so can only connect to nodes which are in the system database.
<br>
Access control uses the syntax
nodename/user/password/account::
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
I think access control allows either
nodename/user/password/account:: or
<br>
nodename"user password":: everywhere.
<br>
<br>
However, only NCP allows numeric addresses. Anything else needs
the nodename. But within NCP you can play using node numbers
everywhere just fine.
<br>
<br>
Johnny
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
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