[HECnet] VAX/VMS 1.50

[Clem Cole]

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 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