[HECnet] VAX/VMS 1.50

[Cory Smelosky]

On Mon, 8 Apr 2013, Clem Cole wrote:

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 5:05 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:

The flag day for TCP/IP was 1 Jan 1983, so I wouldn't expect you were
running much TCP/IP before that point. (Yes, I know experiments and
development was going on, but the number of implementations were few, still
had issues, and was very much work still in progress


Johnny it was TCP/IP.   Remember, I'm one of the implementors of the
original IP/TCP for the VMS (along with Stan Smith) in >>1979<<.   I was
also 3Com first customer at the same time (another but related story).
Most people do not realize the first product 3Com sold was >>software<< -
UNET a TCP/IP implementation for UNIX/V7 (PDP11 and Vax) - we took deliver
on Dec >>32<< 1979 because 3Com had a funding thing with their VCs that
they would ship before the end of 1979.


I didn't knoq TCP/IP existed for UNIX/V7.   How interesting!   What interfaces did it support?

I would hardly call IP/TCP a work in progress. Yes, it was young, but it
was well defined.     Most of the major sites had switched and the US Gov had
a spent a bunch to make sure it was implemented.     We had it running on a
number of interesting and different systems at the time.   If I had the time
and can actually read the tapes, at one time I >>had<< the bits on 9-track
for many of them in my basement (I still have the tapes - but who knows).

FYI: the original IP/TCP for 4.1BSD was not written at Berkeley, it was
written at BBN and used the MIT Chaos-Net hacks to slide in the 4.1BSD
kernel (by Rob Gerawitzs & Rob Walsh).   Remember, BBN had the contract from
ARPA to develop the different IP/TCP implementations.   In fact, the mbuf
code that Rob G created was because he needed a memory handler that was OS
kernel independent, so it could be stuffed into a number of a different
kernels.         Eric Cooper was the grad student that put the "portable BBN
IP/TCP" into 4.1 at UCB to replace the BerkNet and Eric Schmidt (yes the
Google one) made the mailer talk to it.     Berkeley had a contract to
support the base UNIX kernel for ARPA.     So as part of that, wnj would
create "sockets" for 4.1A (as a response to the Accent/Mach "port" concept)
and then re-stuff the BBN code into his socket layer.   Then he, Sam, et al
start to hack it.     Van would take it up the hill to LBL and start to hack
further.   Eventually 4.2BSD would be released as we know it as part of the
UCB ARPA contract and most sites picked up the code from that release not
the BBN release.

DEC all of these release along the way and Fred Canter, Armando Stettner,
and the whole "TIG" (telephone industries group) in Merrimack were doing
their thing for AT&T, the Universities and any UNIX licensee that wanted
it. TIG would begat the Ultrix team.

Not trying to come down on you, but "I was there" and very much "mixed up"
in it all.

As for when MOP was released for the UNIX flavors, I really can not
remember.   It was all around the same time, but as I said, those bits in my
brain are stale and I was not part of any LAT/MOP etc (directly or
indirectly) so their is no real reason for me to remember some of the
specifics.

Clem


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Cory Smelosky
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