[Simh] VMS/VDE: Almost there

[Paul Koning]

> On Oct 8, 2015, at 10:32 AM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
> 
> On 2015-10-08 15:57, Paul Koning wrote:
>> 
>>> On Oct 7, 2015, at 11:42 PM, John Forecast <john at forecast.name> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Oct 7, 2015, at 7:17 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> ...
>>>> 
>>> 	Phase II use NSP v3.1 so that’s probably another indication that it’s a Phase I product.
>> 
>> That would be an interesting surprise.  The history I have seen says that Phase I was RSX only.
>> 
>> It also appears that Phase I is undocumented, and that it isn't compatible (can't be made to interoperate) with Phase II.
> 
> Well, I have some documentation about the DECNET/8 implementation, as well as the sources. Want to implement it? :-)

Maybe.  At the very least it would be interesting to reverse-engineer a basic protocol spec.  While the Phase III and IV specs are quite complete, and many Phase V specs can also be found (with effort), the Phase II specs omit some details, and Phase I specs have never been published as far as anyone can tell.

(What's missing from the Phase II specs is clear documentation of how "intercept" mode works, which is the primitive routing machinery Phase II provides.  I believe it's there for the benefit of PDP-10 systems with front-end processors, but I'm not sure about that.

> It talks DDCMP, and don't seem to be very complex. I can also see some similarities with never versions of DECnet, that I'm a bit more familiar with. But I haven't taken any deeper dives into it.
> 
> Attaching the documentation anyway...

Thanks!

	paul