[HECnet] SIMH IDLE (again)

[Peter Coghlan]

You'll have to forgive me, I'm not entirely familiar with how networking on
VMS works at this level.


I'm not hugely familiar with it myself either. I only know enough to be
dangerous :-)


Can you setup something that uses pseudo devices but doesn't require
promiscuous mode and see if that works? If so then I think we can
definitely narrow it down to your promiscuous theory. If that's the
case it just then becomes a question of is the issue with the pseudo
devices themselves or the way PCAP is setting them up?


As I understand it, when VMS initially detects an ethernet adapter, it creates
a template device, such as EWA0 for example. As soon as something want's to use
the adapter for something, a pseudodevice is cloned from the template device.
For example, when DECnet is started, it creates a pseudodevice called EWA2.
When the Multinet IP stack is started, it creates another two pseudodevices,
EWA4 and EWA6,   one to handle IP and one to handle ARP. Another pseudodevice
handles cluster traffic. Each pseudodevice handles a particular ethernet
protocol type. There is no problem with DECnet, IP and cluster traffic, for
example sharing the same ethernet adapter.

I don't know how PCAP-VMS interacts with this model. What it wants to do does
not seem a good fit for the way the model was designed.


I have no idea what I'm talking about, by the way. Just thinking out loud. :)


I don't know much about this either. As I said, just enough to be dangerous :-)
One day I may get around to researching it in more detail. I'd also like to
find a way to use networking on SIMH running without requiring privileges on
the host machine. Until I can do that, I am not likely to do very much with
it anyway other than some limited testing on a sacrifical system.

Regards,
Peter Coghlan.