[Simh] VMS/VDE: Almost there

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2015-10-08 05:42, John Forecast wrote:
>
> On Oct 7, 2015, at 7:17 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
>
>> On 2015-10-07 21:50, John Forecast wrote:
>>>
>>> On Oct 7, 2015, at 1:16 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have DECNET-8. It's not for OS/8 but for RTS-8. But yes, it is phase II. I have never tried it, though. So I don't know how/if it actually works, and I don't have any phase II or phase III nodes to test against.
>>>>
>>> 	Yes, you’re right, it was RTS-8. Looking at the date on the DECNET-8 SPD (May 1977) seems
>>> 	to imply that it was a Phase I product. Around that time we were just putting together the
>>> 	system-level architecture of DECnet-11M/11D/IAS and it would be another year before
>>> 	they would ship (SPD says June 1978).
>>
>> I have always just assumed it was phase II, but now I sat down and tried reading through the code. And I'm not sure anymore.
>>
>> It's clearly called V1A (some modules are at V1C) of DECNET/8, but the problem is that I can't find any clear mention of which phase it is anywhere.
>> What I can find is that it claims to implement NSP SPEC LEVEL 2.2. Not sure what that is worth. The TLK program also mention adding PDP11 compatibility, so it would definitely appear that it worked, and could communicate with PDP-11 systems.
>>
> 	Phase II use NSP v3.1 so that’s probably another indication that it’s a Phase I product.

John, maybe you can clear some things up for me.
Looking at the Wikipedia article about DECnet, it claims that phase I 
was simply between two nodes. No larger than that. And in addition was 
RSX-11 only. And it was 1974.

Phase II says multiple implementations on different systems, and a max 
of 32 nodes. Also supposedly added task-to-task programming interfaces. 
And supposedly 1975.


Now, looking at the DECNET/8 documentation, there is some discrepancy here.
DECNET/8 supports up to 127 nodes. It only have point-to-point links, 
but it clearly have some idea of dealing with several hops to reach the 
destination. It also obviously have task-to-task programming interfaces, 
which looks very similar to what I know from phase IV.

Now, I'm happy to believe that Wikipedia is just plain wrong, but it 
would be interesting to hear if you can provide any more details to what 
phase I and phase II differed on, and where DECNET/8 would fit based on 
that.

	Johnny