[HECnet] This is probably been asked already but....

[Steve Davidson]

When I joined DEC in 1980, Software Services was working on links out of
the building.   PDP-11/70's running RSX-11M-PLUS used DMC-11's (later
DMR-11's) to connect to the outside.   At first VAXWRK:: (VMS) was
connected to ASTRIX:: (RSX-11m-PLUS), and that was connected to the
other building that connected the campus to the outside.   What they used
to connect the Parker Street Campus to other campuses I just don't
remember.   Serial lines of some sort probably.   The max speed was 56K.
SET HOST from Maynard, MA to Nashua, NH worked quite fast (for me
anyway) :-)   Later,   DMC's/DMR's were replaced by Ethernet cards
(DEUNA's et al).

RT-11 used mostly serial links at fairly low speeds.   I want to say
somewhere between 1200 and 4800 baud - I don't really remember - it's
been too long.

At least one of the data centers in Parker Street used DECsystem-10's.
I have no idea how they were connected.

-Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE 
[mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Johnny Billquist
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2012 21:34
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] This is probably been asked already but....

On 2012-07-02 03:17, Gregg Levine wrote:
On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 9:10 PM, Bob Armstrong <bob at jfcl.com> wrote:
Dave McGuire wrote
  PDP-8: there's a DECnet implementation for OS/8.

  Do you actually have such a thing?   There was a partial 
implementation for
RTS/8 that was, AFAIK, never released.   I have some 
sources for it, 
but it's unfinished.

Bob


Hello!
About all I found was those sources, on the iBib site. And for the 
other OS, no hits so far on Google.

Steve interesting story, and yes I'm not asking about those three 
letter agencies.

Let me put it to all of you this way. In the book "Cuckoo's Egg" as 
related by Cliff Stoll, his(?) VAXes were networked, via 
Ethernet all 
over the campus, (either running BSD or VMS), but they were 
connected 
to the Internet via leased lines.

And in a Doctor Who book, who's reasonably accurate on the 
DEC based 
side of things, and lousy on the desktop side, there are 
PDP-11s and 
possibly a few early Vaxes. and even an Eclipse.

What I am curious about is how the PDP-11s talked to DEC 
Net based systems.

And which ones of the R* operating systems could be confused into 
doing that, and in what ways.

Well, considering the fact that DECnet was born on the 
PDP-11, the question should perhaps be rephrased as how 
non-PDP11 systems managed to talk on DECnet. :-)

If the question is more on a practical note of how 
connections were done, I think the original was over serial 
lines, but I might be wrong. 
Multidrop as well as some high speed links were available in 
Phase III, but ethernet only became an option with DECnet phase IV.

Not sure about the time frame for packet switched interfaces. 
They certainly existed in Phase IV, but I don't know if they 
were available already in phase III.

The RTS-8 DECNET/8, which was mentioned earlier, talks DECNET 
over a serial line, using DDCMP.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                                   || "I'm on a bus
                                                                    ||   on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se                         ||   Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                                         ||   tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol