[HECnet] VMS/RSX Guest accounts

[Thomas DeBellis]

Oh, I'm in Looooong Island, South Shore.

I actually have relatives not far from you in PA, but I hadn't gotten 
around to noodging you yet for the distinct lack of 20's in your 
collection.  I mean, you have a 4341 yet no 20?  Tisk, tisk...

Well, I'm pulling your leg a bit; a 20 is a seriously heavy lift.  A KL 
has three purposes in life: 1) Generate Heat, 2) Suck Power, 3) Run 
winning code.  A 2020 uses far less power, but doesn't have extended 
addressing, so it is stuck at Tops-20 4.1, which leaves out a lot of 
DECnet (and ARPAnet) stuff.  Apparently, you can squeeze 5.0 in; MRC did 
this, but that was MRC.  Tops-20 is at version 7.0 now.

And both of them are seriously cranky beasts that needed care and 
feeding from trained service personnel; wire wrap and all that (yech).  
Remember, it's not a mainframe unless you can't fit it in your house and 
have to take out a second mortgage to pay for the electricity and tons 
(60 for a 20) of air conditioning.

So Paul Allen had a KL based 20, which is now in the the Living Computer 
museum.  But that cost was apparently less than a rounding error 
compared to what he was worth.  A mere monetary blip, as it were.

On 4/22/20 11:28 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
>
>    Hey, I'm 5hrs from DC, where are you based Tom?
>
>               -Dave
>
> On 4/22/20 11:25 PM, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
>> For VMS, for the moment I've gone with one of Bob's machines as that is
>> on the 'local' DECnet area.  Perhaps I'll get better performance
>> although Supratim is closer, milage-wise.  D.C. is about a 5 hour drive
>> from here, while Bob's neck of the woods is a serious hike (Atlantic to
>> Pacific).
>>
>> On 4/22/20 11:14 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> Well, the more the better, so get that VMS account. If you want to, I
>>> can create an account for you on MIM as well. (But it will be
>>> tomorrow, I need to go to bed...)
>>>
>>>    Johnny
>>>
>>> On 2020-04-23 05:12, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
>>>> Yes, but the MIM guest account is shared; I'm going to need to store
>>>> a few files (captures, control files, Etc.)
>>>>
>>>> Wow, you've kept a real VAX running from 1993?  Good for you! I'll
>>>> contact you off-list.
>>>>
>>>> On 4/22/20 11:07 PM, Supratim Sanyal wrote:
>>>>> Thomas - MIM already has a guest account ... I have had fun sending
>>>>> Johnny smtp emails to that account.
>>>>>
>>>>> I can give you an account on MARIAH (a real VAX) if you wish, shoot
>>>>> me a note offline if you decide to follow up ...
>>>>>
>>>>> Regards
>>>>>
>>>>> Supratim
>>>>>
>>>>> On 4/22/20 10:49 PM, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
>>>>>> I've had my fill of FAL and DAP for the moment and have turned to
>>>>>> some other things as sort of a 'break'.  The Tops-10 NFT client
>>>>>> breaks on certain file names that the 20 sends it, so there is
>>>>>> going to be some debugging to track that down.  Fortunately, a very
>>>>>> patient person gave me PPN on one of their 10's.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Right now, I'm working on bringing the Tops-20 mail system a bit
>>>>>> more up to date with respect to DECnet communications. These were
>>>>>> largely put aside when full Internet connectivity happened. Still,
>>>>>> the PANDA distribution has some bit rot because I know that certain
>>>>>> Columbia changes for DECnet (to support CCnet) are not there.  I
>>>>>> can't imagine that we didn't send them to MRC; that would have been
>>>>>> unthinkable.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Fortunately, I was able to remember enough to put some of them back
>>>>>> so that I got SMTP over DECnet working well, again.  It had been
>>>>>> suffering from about two minute timing delays and now it's
>>>>>> instantaneous between 20's, like I remember.   Oddly enough, I
>>>>>> don't remember what else ran SMTP over DECnet; I'm certain that RSX
>>>>>> and VMS could have done it.  I think some VMS site might have.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> However, most non-SMTP DECnet hosts on CCnet were running Mail-11,
>>>>>> which the 20 also groks.  In fact, it can convert Mail-11 addresses
>>>>>> to SMTP and route over other transports such as PUP, Chaos and
>>>>>> TCP/IP as well as DECnet.  We did a lot of mail routing for CCnet
>>>>>> to the Internet on CU20B, back in the day.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Unfortunately, there is some bit rot in some of the Tops-20 Mail-11
>>>>>> code, so I've got some tinkering to do.  Does anyone have a VMS or
>>>>>> RSX system that they'd care to give me a guest account on?  It
>>>>>> doesn't need any special capabilities; I'm just going to be sending
>>>>>> mail and looking a few raw headers over.
>>>>>>
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT
>>>>> 39.19151 N, 77.23432 W
>>>>> QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet
>>>
>