[HECnet] Anonymous FAL (Tops-20)

[Johnny Billquist]

NETACP in RSX (and I suspect VMS) is just the process/program that 
implements a lot of the DECnet protocols. It is actually pretty much not 
related to anything here.

At least in RSX, the NICE protocol is handled by a separate task called 
NICE.TSK.

And when you run NCP under RSX, it pretty much talks to NICE for any 
operations requested, also for the local node.

I know that this is very different from how things work under TOPS-20. 
There are no handling of objects from NCP using NICE in TOPS-20, and 
there is no permanent database (as far as I know), compared to RSX or VMS.

   Johnny

On 2019-07-04 03:06, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
> Tops-20 has a subtly different architecture, in part perhaps reflective 
> of the previously described 'bolt on'.
> 
> The closest thing to NETACP is NMLT20, which implments NCU.  Parts of 
> that are in written BLISS and at one point, it had a shared a partly 
> common code base with some RSX/VAX stuff.  Interfacing to Galaxy (the 
> Tops-10/Tops-20 Operator Interface and Queuing system), NMLT20 was 
> /notorious/ for crashing in early (Phase III) releases.  I wrote many 
> SPR's...
> 
> I can't define objects. FAL itself puts up the FAL object and speaks DAP 
> over it.  Communication with it is either over a DECnet FAL object (via 
> DAP) or with Tops-20 IPCF.  The only messages that gets are (the largely 
> useless) logging messages from inferior FAL processes and checkpoint 
> messages from Quasar, the queue manager.  It doesn't process any other 
> messages from Galaxy, so it doesn't seem that it would know how to 
> swallow anything that NMLT20 might hand off.
> 
> I can define the following:
> 
>     CIRCUIT
>     EXECUTOR
>     KNOWN
>     LINE
>     LOGGING
>     MODULE
>     NODE
> 
> I'll see what I turn up when I finish polishing off that pesky DAP bug 
> (after I finish the VIKING OCR).
> 
> Lots for you to look forward when you get back into it, eh? :-D
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> On 7/3/2019 5:34 PM, Robert Armstrong wrote:
>>
>> >I'll have a look at FAL; at first glance it has no hooks for a default 
>> account
>>
>> It’s probably handled by NETACP, or whatever passes for that on 
>> TOPS20.  Does your NCP understand the command
>>
>> DEFINE OBJECT FAL USER <whatever> PASSWORD <whatever>
>>
>> Bob
>>


-- 
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