[HECnet] Announcing RPM, a software packet manager for RSX-11M-PLUS

Sun Oct 25 17:30:51 PDT 2020

Tops-20 implements IP on the following devices: IMP, NI, CI and TTY.  Of 
these, for the KL KLH10 simulation only the NI works, which is how you 
get DECnet.

I don't recall Tops-20 IP over TTY (I.E., SLIP) ever being a DEC 
product.  It appears in PANDA monitors, but I've never chased down the 
pedigree.  My (vague) guess is that MRC implemented it for the 2020 
which does not support the NI.  It appears to have worked because a lot 
of email came off of LingLing.

So much for Tops-20 SLIP support.  Passing on to the emulator, if you 
want to type a character on a terminal with a KL, you go hand a packet 
to the front end to play with via DTE 0.  KLH10 only partially 
implements the DTE; clock, counters, memory read and write and CTY.  The 
DTE emulator does not operate as an asynchronous process (unlike the NI, 
disk and tape drives), so this can bring out some timing problems.

So let's suppose you got the terminal code to working again.  The 
question then is, how much further do you simulate?  Do you operate off 
of an RS232 interface (probably USB based)?  Dial up? Or simulate 
further by making an outgoing connection somewhere via TCP/IP?

The DTE code would need to be decoupled from the rest of the simulator 
and put into a separate module.  No idea how heavy a lift that would be.

How hard is a DEQNA to come by?  Don't laugh; I do software, not hardware.

On 10/25/20 4:42 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> There is SLIP... ;-)
> I have never tried the SLIP code, but I did write it. It could be an 
> interesting test... (I also have the skeleton of PPP, but I have not 
> completed that one...)
>
> But anything on a beaglebone or whatever will not really help. You 
> need some kind of interface on the PDP-11 side either way. Ethernet is 
> the obvious first choice, but serial lines is (I guess) the next best 
> thing.
> Serial DECnet or serial IP don't make much difference, except I think 
> you'd find serial IP more useful in the long run. Once you have even 
> that, you could run DECnet over IP if you wanted to join in a DECnet 
> sense.
>
>   Johnny
>
> On 2020-10-25 18:24, Chris Zach wrote:
>> I *really* need to find a DEQNA and get tcp/ip running on my 11/83. 
>> This system is feeling lonely. Unless.... Is there a Decnet to TCP/IP 
>> beaglebone code out there that I could use to peer up to MAGICA?
>>
>> CZ
>>
>> On 10/24/2020 1:40 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> RPM is a packet manager for RSX (it has nothing to do with the Red Hat
>>> Packet Manager, except the name).
>>>
>>> I don't post regularly about this software, nor about updates to the
>>> list of available packages, but enough work have been done, and a long
>>> enough time have passed since the initial announcement that an update
>>> can be useful for various people.
>>>
>>>
>>> Since the initial release of RPM, a lot of improvements have been done
>>> to it, and a lot of packages have been updated or added. For anyone
>>> running RSX-11M-PLUS, I would really recommend installing RPM, and 
>>> using
>>> it to get the latest version of various software.
>>>
>>> For information on how to install and use it, see
>>> http://mim.update.uu.se/rpm.htm
>>>
>>>
>>> The current list of packages:
>>>
>>> In  Pkg        Ver     Desc
>>>    --  ---        ---     ----
>>>        RPM        Y0.27   The RSX Packet Manager
>>>        MKE        V1.31   The Unix-like make tool
>>>        TCPIP      V2.5    TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS
>>>        C          000012  PDP-11 C compiler
>>>        CRTL       V1.2    PDP-11 C runtime library
>>>        F77        T5.4    FORTRAN-77 compiler
>>>        F77RTL     V5.4    FORTRAN-77 runtime library
>>>        BP2        V2.7C   BASIC+2 compiler and interactive environment
>>>        BP2RTL     V2.7C   BASIC-PLUS-2 runtime library
>>>        C81        V3.1    COBOL-81 compiler
>>>        C81RTL     V3.1    COBOL-81 runtime library
>>>        BCPL       BCPL04  The DECUS BCPL compiler
>>>        FORTH      V1.3.3  FORTH language for RSX-11M-PLUS
>>>        SORT       V3.0    SORT/MERGE for RSX
>>>        DBG        T2.2.1  PDP-11 Symbolic Debugger
>>>        DTR        V03.03  DATATRIEVE-11 for RSX
>>>        FMS        V02.2   FMS-11 for RSX
>>>        NEMA       Y0.32   The small portable Emacs-compatible editor
>>>        TECO       V40.00  The Text Editor and COrrector (and language)
>>>        TIN        V1.7    Task INformation tool
>>>        ATT        V01     File attribute manipulation tool
>>>        GREP       000007  Tool to search through text files
>>>        MORE       2.17    Interactive text file viewer (VTL)
>>>        NTAIL      X0.2    Text file tail printout
>>>        ERR        X0.2    Display error messages based on codes
>>>        USH        X0.2    Unix shell like pipes
>>>        KERMIT     T3.63   The KERMIT file transfer program
>>>        RNO        2000.1  The BONNER Lab RUNOFF document processor
>>>        SRD        6.9.2   The DECUS directory maintenance tool
>>>        COD        V1.5    File encoder/decoder
>>>        SWATCH     V01.01  Stop watch for commands
>>>        SYM        V1.1    Examine symbols in OBJ and STB files
>>>        VTL        V01.0   Virtual Terminal Log utility
>>>        ORCAM      V01.7   Object file disassembler
>>>        DOB        V2.2    Object file disassembler
>>>        CLEACD     V7.12   The Command Line Editor ACD
>>>        CCL        V9.3    User configurable Command Line Interpreter
>>>        CURSES     X0.1    A Unix compatible curses library for PDP-11 C
>>>        ZEMU       V1.24   The Z-machine emulator
>>>        DUNGEON    V3.2C   The classic dungeon
>>>        ADVENT     03MAR   The classic adventure game
>>>        MILLE      V1.5    The Mille Bournes card game
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, this now includes various layered software from DEC, prebuilt for
>>> M+ I/D systems. I have lots of more software that I intend to add, but
>>> this is already starting to become a significant list.
>>>
>>>     Johnny
>>>
>