[Simh] RTS/8 and DECnet

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2016-03-15 14:13, Paul Koning wrote:
>
>> On Mar 15, 2016, at 5:47 AM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
>>
>> ...
>> I don't remember who I talk to, but it might have been Paul, but it appears DECnet-8 is pretty much Phase I, from what we figured out. Maybe DEC wrote some newer version that have not been found, since documentation and SPDs mention Phase II.
>
> I saw an RTS/8 document that describes Phase I -- studied it some to see what Phase I protocol looks like.  The answer is: significantly different from Phase II, not interoperable, no plausible way to make it interoperate.  The key problem is that the NSP details are different, so a Phase I endpoint trying to talk to a Phase II endpoint would get lost.  Compare that to Phase II through IV where the NSP is basically the same -- Phase III adds retransmission, but the packet formats are upward compatible.
>
> But I also remember hearing about Phase II on PDP-8 systems.  So it seems likely that Phase I was created at some time, only to be superseded by a Phase II implementation.

Like I said, I can't remember if it was you or someone else I was 
talking about DECNET-8 with.

But there are some things that looks slightly inconsistent with what I 
understood from Phase I, but it also seemed pretty clear not to be Phase 
II. But I'd be happy to look more at it, if someone is interested.

And I think Bob asked about the physical links. DECNET-8 do use standard 
serial ports, and there is a DDCMP implementation in the software.

	Johnny