[HECnet] DECnet on 4.3BSD/TOPS-20 and other questions

[Cory Smelosky]

Was anyone ever crazy enough to try to implement any DECnet bits for 4.3BSD?

I doubt it was very highly demanded, thus the "crazy" bit. I'd consider trying to implement it myself, but I don't know C, BSD internals, or in-depth DECnet info and the craziest I've done is gotten a crippled Perl 5 built on Quasijarus. (while i'm on that topic, anyone ever manage to build autoconf/automake on 4.3BSD?) My eventual end goal is to build irssi on 4.3BSD and ignoring the fact it's pretty much impossible.

I'm having trouble finding good documentation for latest TOPS-10 and TOPS-20, anyone know of links off hand? I'd like to get more familiar with them. Also, how would I go about configuring DECnet on TOPS-20? (using pre-built panda, grab me some good manuals and some product tape images and I can roll my own if need be). I suck at google and I get a lot of "top" lists every time I try to find TOPS-10/TOPS-20 stuff   

Yeah, I don't know everything about all of DEC's older stuff, but I like learning my way around, I just need good resources   and an explanation of the document naming conventions.

Also, it's probably better I mention connecting here so all the crazy solutions get mentioned. Dynamic IP, located in Ohio, US. I have several spare UNIX systems to run a bridge on, and I would prefer to get several systems connected (what area should I use? I'll get back with node names   once I figure out how to change them in RSTS/E and TOPS-20) I'm not very good with using emacs, maybe I should just stick with a more basic editor. Or find a better terminal emulator   I don't have any real DEC terminals or any real DEC hardware   yet.

Apologies if any of my questions are a bit annoying or anything.

Thanks!

-- Cory