Talk:Chaosnet

CH10 on a KL10

I'm pretty sure that the MC KL10 was attached to the CHAOSNet via the I/O -11; there was never a PDP-10 I/O bus CHAOSNet interface on it. (Not that one couldn't have been done, of course.) Jnc (talk) 10:06, 24 August 2021 (CEST)

That is consistent with archived source code. AI and MC both had an IO-11 front end; AI's through the Rubin 10-11 interface, MC's through DL10. Only ML had an IO bus device called CH10. DM had no Chaosnet. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 11:17, 27 October 2021 (CEST)

The article page says "SIMH's KA10 and KL10 simulates a CH10", but this is only for emulation, and mostly because there is no DL10 support in the emulator Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 11:20, 27 October 2021 (CEST)

Spelling

The current spelling (variations are mostly a case of what to capitalize) is 'Chaosnet', per AIM-628, the formal, published documentation. Although now that I look, most original documents seem to use the same. Jnc (talk) 13:36, 27 April 2022 (CEST)

VAX/VMS

I found Symbolics' implementation of Chaosnet for VAX/VMS on MIT tapes. It's unclear whether MIT and/or Symbolics DKI would allow this software to be released publicly. I'm trying. Meanwhile, here's an installation guide: https://usermanual.wiki/Document/998035SymbolicsVAXVMSChaosnetInstalltionRel6May85.4170387717.pdf Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 09:35, 22 August 2022 (CEST)

Well, since Symbolics is the owner (which is to say, they wrote it - i.e. someone employed by Symbolics did, not someone associated with MIT), why does MIT come into it? Because it was on their tapes? (Which tapes were these, BTW? Dumps from an MIT VMS system? I ask because there is missing software from the DSSR/RTS Unix system, but Steve Ward didn't think they had any backup tapes - but DSSR/RTS had a VMS, so maybe there are still DSSR/RTS tapes...) If you're having any hassle from MIT, let me know if I can deploy Jerry Saltzer or Dave Clark to help.

Is there any evidence of Symbolics' policy at the time regarding this source- i.e. was it made freely available to anyone who asked for it? If so, maybe you won't have to get a new approval from Symbolics DKI.

Pity it's not the Unix Chaosnet! Who wrote that, BTW? Jnc (talk) 12:53, 22 August 2022 (CEST)

"Emulated" Chaosnet?

What is this intended to mean? It's just about encapsulation, right? It's still Chaosnet, I would argue? --Bv (talk) 18:59, 30 December 2022 (CET)

I don't recall where that word was used, so I can't hazard a guess as to why it was used (or if it was appropriate in that usage); I'll look for it. Jnc (talk) 02:14, 31 December 2022 (CET)

I'm not certain of why I used 'emulated'; I can pretty much guarantee I didn't think hard about it!

I think I was probably in part influenced by all the other work going on to emulate other historic computing systems; since I doubt anyone's doing production work over this one, it just seemed right to call it an emulation too.

Also, I always experienced Chaos running directly on WAN's (I might have been the person who got a protocol number assigned for it in IP - most of the Chaos hackers didn't have much use for anything to do with TCP/IP, which was the competitor to Chaos inside MIT); so, to me, Chaos running over the Internet is truly 'emulated'.

But I can see the case for saying it's not emulated; I'd be OK with changing it. 03:38, 31 December 2022 (CET)

Long-haul WAN links

Do the original implementations work OK over long-haul WANs? ISTR that they used fixed timeouts. Oh, now that I think about it, Symbolics had some intra-company WAN links, so they must have gotten it to work on them. I wonder what encapsulation they used on them; PPP didn't exist yet. I wonder if MINITS was used; if so, we could look at the source (which we now have), and see how they did it. I guess I could look. Jnc (talk) 02:14, 31 December 2022 (CET)

So I see a DUP11 synchronous serial line interface driver, here. The DUP11 sort of supported a number of framings (e.g. DDCMP, SDLC, HDLC) - 'sort of' because they weren't implemented in the DUP11 itself, but the DUP11 could be used to do them - but I can't interest myself in wading through the MIDAS-11 to figure out how the heck it works.

There's a DMC11 Synchronous Serial Controller driver too, here. Jnc (talk) 03:59, 31 December 2022 (CET)