[HECnet] TOPS-20 DECnet

[gerry77 at mail.com]

On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:32:01 -0500, you wrote:

The TOPS-20 host is presently available via IP - 74.143.35.91:1023. In any
case, my knowledge of TOPS-20 is slowly growing *ex nihilo* ... I loaded
the tapes from bitsaver.org and believe that I am running the correct
monitor... (unfortunately, the docs that I've found don't always correspond
to the version of software I've chosen to run).

I'm sure there may be a newer DECnet tape out there; however, the latest I
could find (at the time) was v4, I believe... in any case, one of my
biggest issues is hardware knowledge -- running `netgen` does not seemingly
inquire about the [equivalent] NIC...

As pointed out in other messages, NETGEN is not the right tool for this
task. IIRC DECnet-10 and -20 share a common code base with a good deal of
conditionals, but anyway the idea is the same. On TOPS-10 once the right
monitor is running the job is almost done because things like node name and
address are built into the monitor executable (maybe TOPS-20 is a little
more flexible on this side) so there is no need to do anything more.

http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/BB-PBQUA-BM_1990/01/7-documentation/install.mem.html

At the above link (hope it does not get truncated) there is something that
could be useful: in appendix C there is a reference to the AN-MONDCN.EXE
that maybe is the monitor you are looking for. Check the following tape:

http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/tops20_v7_0_tcpip_distribution_tape/index.html

This other tape contains what appears to be the DECnet-20 distribution:

http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/BB-H240E-BM_1985/index.html

The above tape contains a DECNET.DOC file that states the following:

| 1.8   DECnet-20 Operation
| 
|           DECnet-20 consists of the monitor and front-end   components,   and
| user-mode   utilities.     DECnet-20   resides within the TOPS-20 monitor.
| The DN20 is not required for DECnet communications over the NIA20   and
| the CI20.

So maybe you just need to find the right monitor and user-mode utilities. :)

HTH,
G.