[HECnet] VMS/RSX Guest accounts

[Gregg Levine]

Hello!
And we are neighbors. I am in Astoria Queens. Dave has an amazing
collection of machines, everything imaginable.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."

On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 11:43 PM Thomas DeBellis
<tommytimesharing at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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

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