<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">Christmas Eve, 2019 :)<div><br></div><div><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">On Dec 24, 2019, at 8:56 PM, Paul Koning <<a href="mailto:paulkoning@comcast.net" class="">paulkoning@comcast.net</a>> wrote:</span></font></div><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></font><div class=""><div class="" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class=""></span></font><div class=""><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class=""></span></font><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">On Dec 24, 2019, at 11:59 AM, John Forecast <<a href="mailto:john@forecast.name" class="">john@forecast.name</a>> wrote:</span></font></div><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></font><div class=""><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class=""><br class=""></span></font><blockquote type="cite" class=""><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">On Dec 23, 2019, at 5:51 PM, Johnny Billquist <<a href="mailto:bqt@softjar.se" class="">bqt@softjar.se</a>> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""></span></font><blockquote type="cite" __apple_fixed_attribute="true"><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">On 2019-12-23 20:24, John Forecast wrote:<br class=""></span></font></blockquote><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">...</span></font></blockquote><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.<br class=""></span></font></blockquote><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class="">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.<br class=""><br class=""></span></font></blockquote><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">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.</font></span></div></blockquote><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class=""></span></font></div><div class=""><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></font></div><div class=""><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class=""></span></font></div><div class=""><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></font></div><div class=""><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class=""></span></font></div></div></div></blockquote><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class=""></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> John.</span></div><div><br></div><br><div id="AppleMailSignature" dir="ltr"><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">---</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">39.19151 N, 77.23432 W</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">QCOCAL::SANYAL via <a href="http://www.update.uu.se/~bqt/hecnet.html">HECnet</a></span></div></div><div><br></div></div><div dir="ltr"><br>On Oct 22, 2020, at 4:14 PM, Paul Koning <<a href="mailto:paulkoning@comcast.net">paulkoning@comcast.net</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><span></span><br><span></span><br><blockquote type="cite"><span>On Oct 22, 2020, at 3:43 PM, R. Voorhorst <<a href="mailto:R.Voorhorst@swabhawat.com">R.Voorhorst@swabhawat.com</a>> wrote:</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>@John Forecast:</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>Hi John,</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>The oddity is just the other way around ….</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>The release date of the primitive software, say Phase-I+ is dated at 8-april-1977.</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>The Nip printout is dated 28-dec-1976 which aligns with your story.</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>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.</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>When the Pdp8 development was dropped around may-1977, why not release the current stuff instead?</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>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?</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote><span></span><br><span>My memory must be fading, because the Phase I vs. Phase II discussion Johnny referred to doesn't ring bells. </span><br><span></span><br><span>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.</span><br><span></span><br><span> paul</span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br></div></blockquote></div></body></html>