[HECnet] Intermittent Connection with PyDECnet?

[Thomas DeBellis]

I appear to have neither CIRCUIT VERIFICATION nor NODE TRANSMIT 
PASSWORD, viz:

    NCP>set cirCUIT ni-0 ? ALL
       or one of the following:
      ACTIVE         BABBLE      BLOCKING     CHANNEL       COST
      COUNTER      DEAD
      DTE            DYING       HELLO        INACTIVE      LINE
      LISTEN       MAXIMUM
      NUMBER         OWNER       POLLING      RECALL ROUTER  
    SERVICE      STATE
      TRANSMIT       TRIBUTARY   TYPE         USAGE

    NCP>set noDE venti2:: ? ALL
       or one of the following:
      ADDRESS   CIRCUIT
       or one of the following:
      AREA          BROADCAST        BUFFER          CONSOLE COUNTER
      CPU           DELAY            DIAGNOSTIC      DUMP HARDWARE
      HOST          IDENTIFICATION   INACTIVITY      INCOMING LOAD
      MAXIMUM       OUTGOING         RETRANSMIT      ROUTING SECONDARY
      SEGMENT       SERVICE    SOFTWARE        STATE SUBADDRESSES
      TERTIARY      TYPE

I may be mis-remembering how our DN200 was configured.  I believe the 
Top-20 NCP parser may have shared keyword tables with other DECnet 
implementations via BLISS at one point.  Anyway, I recall at least some 
of it was BLISS.  I haven't look in that particular box lately, but the 
parse tables appear to assembler now, with heavy uses of GLXMAC macros.

The Tops-20 operator interface has two 'sub-modes', as it were: NCP and 
LCP.  NCP parses DECnet related keywords.  LCP is used for LAT 
configuration.  The operator subsystem is kind of neat; OPR parsers send 
packets to Orion, a communications server and router.  It notes an NCP 
subset and routes that to NMLT20 which contains just what you think it 
would.

Early versions of NMLT20 (about 1980) appeared insufficiently 
productized.  It could hang in a loop or (more frequently) crash for no 
readily apparent reason. We submitted a rather large number of SPR's...  
However, it's quite stable now; I don't believe I've had a single 
crash.  I have yet to come to a fully informed conclusion about the 
lexical interface; I sometimes get the impression that it parses for 
more than it can actually do.

Elsewhere in Tops-20, DECnet implementation is a mixed bag; most of the 
monitor code appears finished; I go months without reboots and that is 
with active development.  The user mode code is another matter 
entirely.  I had my hands full fixing a number of issues with DAP and 
FAL. It was /invaluable/ having heterogeneous HECnet nodes to test 
against, RSX 11M+ and VMS.  SETNOD needs some finishing and perhaps some 
additional functionality.  I have yet to look at FTS; I don't see how it 
can get or generate any traffic at all. The monitor interface (NFT:) 
does not appear to be operational. Elsewhere (perhaps Galaxy) appears to 
have no submission interface.  Johnny and I have some minor tweaks to 
flush out with MAIL11 (in addition to the changes that I've already put in).


On 3/2/20 3:25 PM, Robert Armstrong wrote:
>
> >I don't see where I would set an id and password in 7-1-CONFIG or in NCP.
>
> Don’t know about TOPS-20, but in NCP/NICE/NML it’s
>
> SET CIRCUIT … VERIFICATION ENABLED
>
> and
>
> SET NODE … TRANSMIT PASSWORD …
>
> The password the remote node sends has to match the one that’s 
> associated with that node in the local DECnet database.
>
> Bob
>
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