[HECnet] Intro and New User Questions

[Johnny Billquist]

Hi.
First of all, welcome.

On 2017-12-17 21:12, Mark J. Blair wrote:
> Hi there, everybody! I'm a vintage computer collector in southern California, USA, and I'm interested in joining HECnet. I thought I'd introduce myself and then ask some questions on the mailing list before I ask to join the network.
> 
> One of my favorite computers in my collection is a VAX-11/730 system with an R80, RL02, TU81 and DECwriter III. It has an ethernet card, and it came with OpenVMS 7.3 on the R80 and VMS 5.3 on an RL02 pack. I don't seem to have a single good TU58 tape, even after repairing the capstan rollers in the drives, but I can boot up the computer via tu58em. I've shared the boot-optimized console tape image I put together, as well as an image I created of the CRDPACK RL02 pack that came with the system:
> 
>      https://github.com/NF6X/VAX-11-730-Console-v57

Fun. TU58 might be getting a bit old in the tooth now, so maybe not 
totally surprising. It was never a very fun device.

> It's been a couple years since I fired up that system, but I recently had another burst of interest and began setting up some VAX emulations in simh. I have a simulated VAX-11/785 running in simh on a BeagleBone Green (a little embedded computer board, similar to the Raspberry Pi). I plan to leave it running as a full-time VMS presence at home, so it can be up on HECnet all the time. It would be a natural host for any bridging or routing I need to do, and I plan to use it as my main bridge between my modern computers and anything I have speaking DECnet. I have TCP/IP set up on it so I can FTP files on and off of it from my modern systems. The 11/730 won't be powered up very often, and probably mostly during winter!
> 
> I have plans to restore a heap of parts that I have into a working PDP-11/44 eventually, and I suppose it should be able to run RSX-11 and also visit HECnet?
> 
> I expect that I'll probably get more DECnet-capable hardware in the future. I'd like to get a PDP-11/73 someday, and I'm curious about those little QBUS MicroVAXen. Maybe I should add a VAXstation to the mix, too?

Sound like you plan to be busy.

> So now it's time for me to figure out how to join HECnet. I gather that my best options would be to either use the bridge program, or to set up my VAX-11/785 emulation to bridge things somehow.

Correct.

> If I use the bridge program running on a Linux box, can I configure it to only bridge traffic to/from the rest of HECnet? I don't want the traffic between my local DECnet nodes to leave the house. If the bridge program forwards all DECnet packets that it sees, then maybe I should learn how to set up my emulated VAX-11/785 as a router instead?

Nope. A bridge will forward all traffic. It has to. DECnet do not 
discriminate. The bridge makes it all seem like the same ethernet 
segment, and thus, any machine expects to be able to talk directly to 
any other machine, so the bridge cannot really act like any kind of 
firewall.

For that reason the bridge also does not scale very well, so I prefer if 
people hook up using some kind of routing instead. Either Multinet (VMS 
or RSX), or using Cisco boxes. Or possibly even Paul Koning's DECnet 
router in Python, which can talk both to ethernets, and to machines 
running Multinet tunneling.

> And now for the really tough question: Once I add my systems to HECnet, what can I *do*? I'd like to join HECnet just because it's there, but it would be swell if there's more fun stuff to do.

Well, there isn't that much, per se. You can, of course, do your mail 
through HECnet (there is a mail gateway to the rest of the Internet), 
and you can use PHONE to talk to others on HECnet. You can put up file 
repositories, or download files from others who have made stuff 
available. You might hand out guest accounts, or provide any silly 
service you can think of. However, expect that not many will make use of 
any of it, as most people are mostly just amused by the fact that the 
network exist.

Personally, I do a lot of RSX development, and I have machines with both 
guest accounts and file repositories. I also from time to time, test RSX 
DECnet against other DECnet implementations to check if things work, or 
if there are things I need to fix in RSX.
I also have a few automated services, like my nodename database for 
HECnet, which is handled by Datatrieve on RSX, and which do have a web 
interface for querying. It can also be accessed by other DECnet nodes, 
if they have remote Datatrieve set up.

In short, there are a few services, but not much. If you want to do 
something, you'll have to come up with the ideas yourself.

One suggestion would be to think if you can come up with some nice way 
of getting a network map of HECnet. But this is tricky. There have been 
a few attempts in the past, but nothing current. And please don't just 
start trying to access all machines, as some will light up as christmas 
trees with intrusion alerts if you just try to access files on them or 
something.

   Johnny

-- 
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