[HECnet] Oldest VAX/VMS for VAX-11/730 on HECNET

[Paul Koning]

> On Dec 9, 2021, at 6:02 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
> 
> On 2021-12-09 23:52, Mark J. Blair wrote:
>> So, basically like bang paths in uucp? Maybe I will play with that sometime!
> 
> Yes. But depending on application, it might be that all machines have to be up and running at the moment you're trying to use it, as opposed to UUCP which was store and forward.

Right.  Roughly speaking, the sending application sees that there are multiple nodes, and that it uses PMR for this.  It connects to the first of the nodes, object 63.  It then sends it the rest of the connect information. PMR picks off the next node.  If that's the last node, it connects to the requested object, otherwise again to another PMR.

VMS has PMR-like capability for network file access because RMS recognizes file names with node name prefixes, so it's an automatic consequence of that feature.  RSTS NFT (the application which does network file access) doesn't support PMR as far as I remember.  So if you have VMS nodes around you can chain node names in file access, with RSTS-only you cannot.

MAIL does it internally I think.  Some vague memory says that RSTS network terminal ("set host") has PMR support, I need to look.

I'll definitely add PMR to PyDECnet at some point fairly soon.

	paul