[HECnet] Announcing TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS

[Johnny Billquist]

Um, Mark. Just so you know. I already have all rsx sig tapes as virtal tapes. I should make them available on hecnet, I guess.    

But I'm glad you find the stack useful.

  Johnny


Mark Matlock <mark at matlockfamily.com> skrev: (14 januari 2015 11:43:11 CET)
Johnny,
Thank you for this latest release! I look forward to downloading it and
using it when I get back from travels this week. I did want to let you
know that I have been using your prior release of TCP/IP for RSX-11M+
on my PDP-11/83 and also on virtual PDPs under Simh.

Your FTP capability has been the best way (essentially the only way) I
have been able to move files in and out of RSX from Linux or the
outside world in general. One of the projects I am currently working on
is loading all of the RSX DECUS SIG tapes into a single RA92 disk image
so that they can be loaded as RSX virtual disks to be easily accessed.
The FTP utility makes that possible. On the PDP-11/83, I am using the
SCSI2SD card to emulate the RA92 disk connected through an Emulex UC07.

Thanks again for your work in making TCP/IP for RSX available as it
will be critical in keeping RSX connected to the future.

Best Regards,
Mark

On Jan 13, 2015, at 6:40 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:

Well, it's been a long time project, but I'm happy to finally
announce a more public initial release of TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS.

This is the result of over 20 years of development. Needless to say,
I've been doing a lot of things over the years, and this code have been
through four reimplementations over the years.
What I now release is something that I believe is a nice and useful
piece of software. I am aware of the fact that most people do not use
these machines any longer, but if someone actually wants to talk to me
about support for this or other RSX software, let me know.

Also, feel free to spread this information to anyone who might be
interested, anywhere.

So - what is in this release?
It is a complete implementation of ARP, IP, UDP, and TCP for
RSX-11M-PLUS. It has been tested on RSX-11M-PLUS V4.6, but should work
on any V4 release. There might be some . small tweaks or fixes
required, but nothing major.
It do require a system with split I/D-space, or else at least the TCP
part will not fit.
For Unibus machines, it should be possible to run without any
additional software except what is in a base RSX distribution.
For Q-bus machines, DECnet is required for ethernet networking.
The TCP/IP stack can co-exist with DECnet.
Some utilities also utilize RMS for file access.

A bunch of tools, utilities and libraries are also included. These
include:
. IFCONFIG network configuration tool.
. NETSTAT network information tool.
. PING
. TRACEROUTE

. DNS client
. FTP daemon
. FTP client
. HTTP server
. TELNET client (rudimentary)
. TFTP client
. TFTP server
. INET server that can do SINK, ECHO, DAYTIME, QUOTE, and IDENT
. NTP client
. LPR client that sits in the queue manager (rudimentary)

. FORTRAN-77 library
. BASIC+2 library
. PDP-11 C library

The implementation fulfills most of the requirements put forth in RFC
1122. There are a few limitations because of restrictions in the
PDP-11, but none of them should really cause any problems.

Documentation is still on the thin side, but example configs are also
provided, along with installation scripts.

A bunch of test programs and example programs are also included, as
well as the sources of all tools and libraries.

The TCP/IP stack itself only comes in binary form.

All tools are also included precompiled in the distribution, so an
installation only have to build the stack itself for your system, and
then you should be ready to go.

The API only have a slight resemblance to the Unix sockets API.
However, if someone sits down to write code to use TCP/IP under RSX,
I'm sure they will discover that it is extremely easy to use the
libraries, or the basic functions.

The TCP/IP implementation is mostly written as device drivers. This
also have some other interesting implications, such as it is possible
to access TCP as a normal file. You can, for instance do something
similar to the Unix netcat command by issuing the MCR command:

PIP TI:=TC:"foo.com";4711

which would open a connection to foo.com, on port 4711, and any data
sent from that machine will be shown on the terminal.

The resources used by TCP/IP are modest. A memory area (size
selectable at generation/startup) is used internally. The amount of
memory in the private pool limits the amount of data that can be
buffered. Normal pool is used in a small quantity for each TCP port
that is open.

People are welcome to play around with this, and make improvements.
Contributions of code is most welcome.

There are still lots of things to do. The programs marked as
rudimentary should be rewritten.
The most obvious thing still missing is a telnet daemon, which
probably is my next step.

However, the reason for now announcing the release is that it can
finally be distributed natively from an RSX host.

The main locations to download the TCP/IP for RSX are:

Madame.Update.UU.SE (anonymous ftp).

This is one of my development systems for this software. It runs
under E11, and if things are down, I blame E11. :-)
When connected, you are already in the right directory. There is both
an RL02 disk image there, which can be downloaded by anyone. If you
happen to have an RSX system which you are conneting from, you can also
try getting the BQTCP.TAP tape image. Such an image will not transport
cleanly to a non-RSX system, however. Sorry.

ftp.Update.UU.SE (anonymous ftp) - /pub/pdp11/rsx/tcpip
The disk image is normally duplicated to ftp.update.uu.se as well, so
the same file can be found there.

I hope some people will find this useful/amusing. :-)

    Johnny Billquist

-- 
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

-- 
Skickat fr  n min Android-telefon med K-9 E-post. Urs  kta min f  ordighet.