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

[Johnny Billquist]

Most things PDP-11 was left around, and eventually sold to Mentec. So 
obviously more than just VMS and Ultrix stayed around. With DECnet, it 
wasn't until phase IV that the torch was firmly passed on to VMS, and 
RSX started playing catchup instead of leading.

Digital Unix didn't show up until Alpha, and it's a very different thing 
to Ultrix.

But the PDP-8 went slightly sideways. First of all, DECnet8 was for 
RTS-8, which was a realtime system. Slightly reminding of RSX, but a 
completely different thing. It was not a generic environment to the same 
extent as most operating systems. More embedded.
The thing is, DECnet really pushed the PDP-8. The biggest issue is just 
memory. The extension from 4K to 32K happened already in the 60s, and by 
the late 70s, 32K was not much to play with any more.
There was a 128K extension made for the PDP-8, but that never saw much 
sales. By then, the PDP-8 was pretty much in decline for general 
computing anyway, and the PDP-11 was just so much better, even if it was 
more expensive.

So, no real surprise that they decided to stop DECnet development for 
the PDP-8. I suspect not that many licenses were ever sold. Even RTS-8 
itself was a bit more niche already.

The PDP-8 instead ended up as the platform for word processing for a 
while at DEC. Which was a very different target, and for which DECnet 
(at that time) was not at all that relevant. Not to mention the problems 
of squeezing it all in, as it grew...

   Johnny

On 2020-10-24 01:48, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
> One can speculate on a number of reasons for this, my top two guesses 
> are that DEC was rapidly evolving the protocol and yet hadn't converged 
> on the degree of productization it would have on the PDP8 platform (what 
> PDP-8 OS was this?)
> 
> I don't know what wasn't wound down except VMS and Digital Unix (née 
> Ultrix).  I had heard that DEC walked away from the PDP-15 so abruptly 
> that "customers didn't even realize it had happened" or something along 
> those lines.
> 
> Under Tops-20, there are all sorts of extremely interesting hooks for 
> DECnet functionality.  For example, the file system was being modified 
> to hold DECnet nodes, user names and passwords.  There are hooks for an 
> NFT: device and one assumes that this would have implemented a kind of 
> transparent file access.  A lot of stuff doesn't appear to have been 
> fully production ready; there are a number of issues with DAP, for 
> example.  One assumes a UETP suite for DECnet might have caught this.
> 
> And all those nifty PDP-11 OS's!!
> 
> Sigh; I have COBOL and assembler programs that I wrote (on punched 
> cards) as a student in the 1970's that will still execute just fine on 
> z/OS (née MVS) and z/VM.  I oversee development under z/TPF, which some 
> assembler modules going back to the the early 1980's.
> 
> To say that JCL is not intuitive is not to do its arcane, obfuscated 
> syntax true justice.  And it's all very 3270 half-duplex terminals 
> (simulations), blah.  Yet, there's something to be said for reverse 
> compatibly.  None of my (very early) Windows programs will work 
> anymore.  A number of my Unix programs still will.
> 
> On 10/22/20 3:43 PM, R. Voorhorst wrote:
>>
>> @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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-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol