[HECnet] Downtime next week

[Gregg Levine]

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Paul Koning<Paul_Koning at dell.com> wrote:
Excerpt of message (sent 20 August 2009) by Zane H. Healy:


On Thu, 20 Aug 2009, Paul Koning wrote:

Excerpt of message (sent 20 August 2009) by Zane H. Healy:

Ditto, though last I tried Linux DECnet was in the late 90's.   It's
also worth mentioning that DECnet/E seems to have trouble coexisting
with just about anything, so DECnet/Linux isn't alone. :-)

Oh really?   That wasn't our experience when we built it...

   paul

I suspect it is one of those "version creep" sort of things.   I've noticed
that VAX/VMS V5.5-2 is much happier talking with things such as RSTS/E, and
IIRC even RSX-11M+ than say OpenVMS V8.3.   Of course my secondary OS is
OpenVMS (primary is Mac OS X), so my comments are coloured a little by it.

I could believe that.   Once PDP-11 support was sold off, it would make
sense for interoperability with those operating systems to suffer.

Another area I've had problems with DECnet/E is with the network hardware
itself, and software installation.   It is incredibly touchy about your
network switches.   I had one switch that every other OS and network stack I
through at it would work, not so DECnet/E, in fact I had to put the PDP-11
on a hub to be able to even install it, as I couldn't do the install when
attached to the switch.   The other installation problem was that the
distribution kit doesn't like living on a 4mm DAT.   You can install RSTS/E
from 4mm DAT, but as near as I can tell, DECnet/E needs to live on a TK50
(or I assume 9-Track).

I can't understand that.   RSTS just installs from plain old tape.
Some kits are backupsets (ANSI labeled), there may be some DOS labeled
tapes (meaning the drive you have must be able to handle 14 byte
blocks) and the RSTS bootable OS install table is a mixed format tape
(first DOS then ANSI).

As for touchy about network switches, in what way?   RSTS -- probably
like most PDP-11 systems -- doesn't have much memory for network
buffers, so if your switch bunches the traffic together then that
might cause trouble.   But apart from that it's just plain old
Ethernet.   The only OS I ever heard of having Ethernet issues was
DECnet/DOS when used with a 3C901 NIC -- which has only a single
buffer so it would croak on back to back packets.   (The solution to
that was "buy a real NIC".)

It has been several years since I've been able to play with it much, has
anyone managed to install DECnet/E on an emulated system?   About 6 years ago
it refused to install on either E11, or SIMH for me (of course at that point
SIMH networking code was very primitive).   IIRC, that is long enough ago I
was using a different switch than the one that gave me so many problems.

Apart from my stint in RSTS development, which by now is almost 25
years ago, I've mostly run RSTS and DECnet/E on E11.   It's been a
while since I did that, but it certainly worked in the past; that's
how I did the interop testing with DECnet/Linux.   I also at one time
got DECnet/E running on a Pro-380, DDCMP only unfortunately.   Some day
I may write a DECNA driver... :-(

     paul



Hello!
I have here on 5.25 floppy the binaries for the other DEC networking
programming, it is the one who's card which wears two discrete
connectors.(Which I've been trying to find with limited success.)

At one time I had a binary which would change that to update it to
accommodate an Ethernet card, the Racal thing.   I don't suppose you
would happen, Paul, to have a copy of DECnet/DOS on floppies?
-- 
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature was once found posting rude
messages in English in the Moscow subway."