[TUHS] Research Datakit notes

Paul Ruizendaal pnr at planet.nl
Sun Jun 26 21:04:39 AEST 2022


> On 26 Jun 2022, at 03:41, Anthony Martin <ality at pbrane.org> wrote:
> 
> Really nice outline. I felt some déjà vu when opening the document: I
> remember reading your notes in April of 2020.

Thank you. Yes, I have not updated these notes since then.

> Would you happen to know where I can find copies of these three
> papers?
> 
> A. G. Fraser, "Datakit - A Modular Network for Synchronous and
> Asynchronous Traffic", Proc. ICC 79, June 1979, Boston, Ma.,
> pp.20.1.1-20.1.3
> 
> G. L. Chesson, "Datakit Software Architecture", Proc. ICC 79, June
> 1979, Boston Ma., pp.20.2.1-20.2.5
> 
> G. L. Chesson and A. G. Fraser, "Datakit Network Architecture," Proc.
> Compcon 80, February 1980, San Fransisco CA., pp.59-61

Two of these three were in Sandy Fraser’s archives:

https://www.jslite.net/notes/dk1.pdf

https://www.jslite.net/notes/dk2.pdf

The middle one is I fear lost - unless a paper copy of the proceedings is still lurking in some university library. I think it will be mostly about the “CMC” switch control software, which is somewhat described in the Luderer paper as well. As far as I can tell, there is no surviving Unix code that was designed for the CMC version of Datakit (unless someone is sitting on a V7 tape with the Datakit drivers still included).

> To connect to one of the Plan 9 cpu servers at Bell Labs, you would
> dial "nj/astro/helix!9fs”.

Out of interest, would you know if the switch-host interface for Datakit in the days of Plan9 worked more or less the same as in 8th Edition? Or had it much evolved by then?









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