On Wednesday, February 13, 2019 at 3:47:43 PM UTC-5, Dennis Boone wrote:
I recently learned of two different software packages that provided
NJE networking under PRIMOS: AMBER and RNET. I'd be interested to
learn more about these. Does anyone have memories, collateral, doco,
or software that they'd be willing share? I'm willing to scan and
return physical items.
I brought up RNET on a Prime 9750. My recollection is we got the software for the price of a blank 9-track tape and postage. It came in the form of compilable source code. It was probably written in PLP or some version of FORTRAN because I had no
problems compiling RNET and that's about all we had in our shop for development at the time, other than PMA (PRIME Macro Assembler) which I never used.
I searched for our BITNET node name (CRNLAES) and found it and some other Primos BITNET nodes mentioned in a old BITNIC file from 1988:
http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/athena/reference/net-directory/net-dir/net.directory.part3
There is contact information for most of the BITNET nodes in that file, but I can tell you that for CRNLAES we have no records, tapes, documentation, etc from that time.
I looked over each of the Primos BITNET nodes in that directory, and this one seems vaguely familiar to me:
BROCK1P; no aliases; 1750; PRIME 9955-II; PRIMOS; PRIME/PUNCH, PUNCH,
PUNCH; State University of New York College at Brockport ACS, Academic
Computing Services, Brockport, NY 14420 USA; Brian Volkmar,
BRIAN@BROCK1P, +716-395-2479; BITNET
It may be that Brian Volkmar from SUNY Brockport is the person we got our copy of RNET from. I tried some Internet searches for combinations of his name, Brockport, BITNET, RNET, PRIMOS, PRIME. I was able to find some archived Brockport computing
newsletters at
https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu . Using that web site's own search engine to look for documents mentioning RNET, I find a few. The earliest (March 1988) document there that mentions RNET is
https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/cgi/
viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=lits_news and that document includes this text:
BITNET
SUNY Brockport is one of the first PRIME computer sites
in the country to support BITNET, the international
telecommunications network connecting over 400 colleges and
universities worldwide. ACS is currently testing a
prerelease version of RNET on an experimental basis. Although
RNET needs refinement, initial response from the college
community has been highly favorable.
It appears that RNET was operational but still in development in early 1988. If Brockport was the author or RNET, that would probably read a different way. But maybe they were exceedingly humble and also the author of RNET.
Good luck in your search.
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