[HECnet] [simh] Decnet8: Who has any knowledge about this product and has seen it actually working in whatever versions? Cross post from Hecnet --> @John

[R. Voorhorst]

@John Forecast:

 

Hi John,

 

The oddity is just the other way around ….

 

The release date of the primitive software, say Phase-I+ is dated at 8-april-1977.

The Nip printout is dated 28-dec-1976 which aligns with your story.

 

So why ship something clearly broken with an obvious simple bug that should have been easily catched with a minor level of release quality control.

When the Pdp8 development was dropped around may-1977, why not release the current stuff instead?

Some form of date editing in the software was clearly done on package level as the date 8-apr-77 appears all over the place, but why for a product at that time already 1-3 years ago?

 

Best regards,

 

Reindert

 

From: simh at groups.io [mailto:simh at groups.io] On Behalf Of John Forecast
Sent: Thursday, 22 October, 2020 17:23
To: simh at groups.io
Subject: Re: [simh] Decnet8: Who has any knowledge about this product and has seen it actually working in whatever versions? Cross post from Hecnet

 

 

On Oct 19, 2020, at 6:07 PM, R_Voorhorst <simh at swabhawat.com <mailto:simh at swabhawat.com> > wrote:

 

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!!

If these dates are correct it’s unlikely this code is Phase II. Phase II design was mostly done in 1976 (maybe late 1975) with protocol design along with prototype code running standalone on various PDP-11’s. In January 1977 a group was constituted in the Mill to develop networking products (mostly DECnet) for RSX-11M/S/D/IAS, RT-11 and the PDP-8 (I joined that group in late January 1977). In early May, there was an off-site meeting to finalize the API’s that the RSX systems would use - running code wasn’t available for another 4 or 5 months. Around that May timeframe the PDP-8 development was dropped, I don’t know if it was cancelled or transferred back to the OS group (as later happened with RT-11).

 

As Johnny pointed out it’s more likely to be a snapshot of the Phase II development specs from late 1976 - bug fixes/changes were happening all through the summer of 1977.

 

  John.

 

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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