[HECnet] Multics online as node 1.770 (BANAI)

[Mark Abene]

On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 10:19 PM, Jeffrey H. Johnson <jhj at trnsz.com> wrote:

> I had a brief conversation with James Wilcoxson (of the PR1ME Series 50 /
> PRIMOS emulation fame) who mentioned he would be willing to implement X.25
> connectivity for PRIMOS ... if he had someone someone else to talk to ...
> he's using simulation PR1ME Ringnet currently and has his various emulated
> PR1ME systems networking with that white nicely.
>

That would be excellent! I was actually talk about these emulators with
some friends of mine. I actually uploaded and compiled a FORTRAN version of
adventure in a folder called PHIBER on the first emulated system. It's been
there ever since. My emulated cisco 7000 is connected to HECnet 24/7, and I
would definitely volunteer to network encapsulated X.25 with Wilcoxson if
he was willing.


> I seem to remember that a major X.25 player used PRIMOS as the backbone of
> their network.  Which PDN was that?
>

It was Telenet. All their management systems were PR1MEs. Telenet (and
later Sprint as owner) was also in the business of selling X.25 subnets,
using their TP packet switches (TP 3006, TP 3325, and high-end TP 4000
series) to telcos, financial institutions, and foreign nations (to serve as
the national PDN). All subnets typically came with one or two PR1MEs as
network management systems.


> And, yes, I've used Dynamips X.25 quite extensively over a series of back
> to back interconnected links, using the Cisco "x25" encapsulation over
> emulated serial links. I wish there was better documentation as to the
> lower levels of the encapsulation modes used by IOS.
>
> What is your relationship with Tymnet, Mark?  Are you at all familiar with
> the operation of TYMCOM/X?
>

I have intimate first-hand knowledge of Tymnet's original public network
(and many of its subnets). I was at one time extremely familiar with
TYMCOM/X. That was Tymshare's customized version of TOPS-10 that they used
for node code development and revision control, as well as documentation
archive for all the network management and debugging facilities. The
original Tymnet engines were based around the Interdata 7/32. There were
some experimental "turbo engines" that were put into production based on
the Motorola 68000, but they weren't nearly as popular. That coincided with
the gradual phasing out of the original pdp10's running TYMCOM/X to the (at
the time) much newer/faster Sun workstations and servers. The turbo node
development was done on Sun 3's if I remember, with an Interdata cross
assembler to handle the older node code. But you're probably more
interested in TYMCOM/X... I heard that the Living Computer Museum in
Seattle is trying to bootstrap TYMCOM/X? That would be awesome! Not sure if
they have access to the necessary Tymnet node (engine) hardware needed to
multiplex the terminals. All that stuff would have to talk the Tymnet II
protocol (like I mentioned earlier, it isn't X.25).

Regards,
Mark



>
>
> --
> Jeffrey H. Johnson
> jhj at trnsz.com
> https://ban.ai/multics
>
> On Sep 7, 2018, at 7:05 PM, Mark Abene <phiber at phiber.com> wrote:
>
> It's actually very easy to set up an entire X.25 network by tunneling over
> IP using emulated cisco routers on dynamips.
> I demonstrated this to another list member some years back.
>
> By the way, just a minor correction: while Telenet/Sprintnet was a native
> X.25 network, Tymnet was most certainly not. While the ISIS bus of a Tymnet
> Engine could be fitted with a wide variety of protocol interface cards
> (X.25 among them), Tymnet's own internal protocol was simply known as
> "Tymnet protocol", and was entirely its own thing. There were also a number
> of X.75 gateways accessible on Tymnet, many on satellite links, to allow
> users to connect to foreign X.25 networks.
>
> -Mark
>
> On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 8:32 AM, Fred <fcoffey at misernet.net> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 6 Sep 2018, Jeffrey H. Johnson wrote:
>>
>> Other things being worked and in various stages of completion are
>>> X.25 networking and IBM 3270 terminal support. If we can complete the
>>> X.25 support, I envision creating a 'BAN X.25 PSDN', a virtual
>>> hobbyist Telenet/Tymnet-like PSN network for X.25 systems. There are other
>>> exciting
>>> Multics projects in progress by other parties as well.
>>>
>>
>> Now this would be *awesome*.  Over the years I've had some opportunity to
>> rescue some X.25 gear but declined because I didn't have a use for it.
>>
>> Let's just say I spent a fair bit of time on Telenet/Sprintnet back in
>> the day and it would be neat to capture that nostalgia.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>
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