[HECnet] Decnet8: Who has any knowledge about this product and has seen it actually working in whatever versions?

Mon Oct 19 14:01:27 PDT 2020

L.S.

Currently I am finishing testing for the release of the last member of the Pdp8 series computers: Simh Pdp8a with some new devices (and some from old not present in Ppd8).

Current state of affairs is, that it is running Os8 V3S 128k monitor and the Kt8 diagnostics and is stable. 

Also F4 runs and basic Rts8 V2b and V3.

The last hurdle is to activate Decnet8 as the last test station to really load a Pdp8 with some realistic real time work.

However …. 

Activating Decnet8 leads to a lot of funny but nasty surprises and is tedious at best.

Basic software can be found on the internet with only 2 flavors of Nip and Nsp which differ only slightly.

The setup, assembling and loading is easy enough, though Nip02 uses a thing that is only available in Rts8 V3 exec although it was released for V2b.

That should be catched with prerelease testing.

The initial point is already, that the Ddcmp lines are not starting up automatically.

Looking in the code there are pointers to things with temp status or not implemented, like the STRTUP function code in Nsp which might be needed to startup the lines.

There are quite some discrepancies between current available Decnet8 and the documentation in Decnet8.pdf as can be seen with the Nip report:

According to the Decnet8 doc copyrighted in 1977, the example display of status looks as follows:

4.5 SAMPLE NIP PRINTOUT 

The following is a typical NIP printout: 

NETWORK INFORMATION PROGRAM V1 

PHYSICAL LINE STATUS [DDCMP V4B] 

LINE NODNAM (#) STATE DRIVER VRSN UP SINCE 

0 ACTON (3) ON-LINE KL8J 3A 8:03:35 28-DEC-76 

1 MAYNRD (2) OFF-LINE DKC8 2B 

2 CONCRD (5) STARTING LOCAL 15A 

LOGICAL LINK STATUS [NSP VllE] 

CHAN STATE LINE TASK SRCE-NAME[PPN] TYPE LINK DEST-NAME[PPN] TYPE LINK 

1 IN-USE 0 12 TARZAN[6,0] 10 4 JANE [3,1] 7 6 

2 WAKING 1 3 DONALD[2,2] 3 3 

3 UNUSED 1 3 DUMMY [4,4] 29 14 

4 BOOT 2 6 MASS [1,23] 3 44 

PHYSICAL LINE ERROR STATUS 

LINE 0: 

3 NAKS WITH HEADER CRC ERRORS 

5 NAKS WITH DATA CRC ERRORS 

83 NAKS WITH REP ERRORS 

1 NAK WITH BUFFER UNAVAILABLE 

2 NAKS WITH HEADER FORMAT ERRORS 

192 NAKS WITH MESSAGES TOO LONG 

100 MSGS WITH HEADER CRC ERRORS 

1 MSG WITH REP ERROR 

1 MSG WITH DATA OVERRUN 

10 MSGS WITH HEADER FORMAT ERRORS 

9 MSGS WITH MESSAGES TOO LONG 

LINE 1: NO ERRORS 

LINE 2: 

3 NAKS WITH DATA OVERRUNS 

1 MSG WITH REP ERROR

A real printout on the current generated system is as follows:

NETWORK INFORMATION PROGRAM V1C

PHYSICAL LINE STATUS     [DDCMP V1A]

LINE  NODNAM (#)     STATE      DRIVER VRSN  UP SINCE

0    UNKNOWN***** OFF-LINE    KL8J     1A

LOGICAL LINK STATUS     [NSP V1C]

CHAN STATE LINE TASK SRCE-NAME[PPN]  TYPE LINK DEST-NAME[PPN] TYPE LINK

1  UNUSED    0   36  TLK   [1,2]       0   0

PHYSICAL LINE ERROR STATUS

LINE  0:   NO ERRORS

       0  MESSAGES TRANSMITTED

       0  MESSAGES RECEIVED

The following oddities – amongst more - can be seen:

1.       The date is 28-dec-76, the various edit dates in the current software are all centered on april/may-77.

2.       Ddcmp is dated 7-apr-77 with version 1A, the doc mentiones already 4B

3.       KL8 ISR is versioned 3A while the current available version is 1A and dated at 8-apr-77

4.       And then the Nip version V1 as documented is older than the V1C version of the internet release!!

And there are a lot more things going on. So the bottom question remains: has anyone seen the internet versions working or is there a clobber up between an advanced laboratory (Phase-II??) version as documented (look at the Ddcmp versions) and a preleased or prior old Decnet version. And if so, can anything be retrieved or is it lost forever.

Best regards,

RV

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