[ih] NCP, TCP/IP question

[Vint Cerf]

thanks!!

v


On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 8:31 AM Nelson H. F. Beebe via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Vint Cerf asks about early implementation languages for TCP/IP.
>
> I searched our remaining archives of what in the 1980s and 1990s was
> science.utah.edu, a DECsystem 20/40 (later upgraded to a 20/60)
> running TOPS-20, and found TCP/IP network code written in PDP-10
> assembly languages with these names:
>
>         tcpbbn.mac  tcpcrc.mac  tcpjfn.mac  tcptcp.mac
>
> The files in that directory carry time stamps from 1984.10.25 to
> 1985.09.11.
>
> The tcpbbn.mac file has this comment:
>
>         ;COPYRIGHT  (C)  DIGITAL  EQUIPMENT  CORPORATION  1976, 1985.
>
>         This module implements the BBN TCP JSYS interface.
>         This  code  was originally developed at Bolt Beranek and Newman
> (BBN)
>         under contract to  the  Defense  Advanced  Research  Projects
> Agency
>         (DARPA).
>
> The JSYS instruction is the PDP-10 system call.
>
> I also found a memo, design.mem, with the header
>
>                   Black Arts
>                       of
>         Transmission Control Protocol
>             Inter Network Protocol
>                 Implementation
>                     in the
>             VAX / VMS Environment
>
>                   July 1982
>
>                 Stan C. Smith
>                Tektronix, Inc.
>         Computer Resource Dept 50-454
>                  P.O. box 500
>            Beaverton, Oregon  97077
>
> that describes the VAX/VMS TCP/IP code written in Bliss, a systems
> programming language that was developed at CMU for DEC, and used by a
> few sites with DEC development contracts.  Otherwise, it was a
> licensed software product that was too expensive for us to have on our
> PDP-10, PDP-11, and VAX systems.
>
> Instead, we wrote such code in assembly language, and later, in Pascal
> (TOPS-20 compiler from Chuck Hedrick's team at Rutgers), C (PCC
> compiler ported to TOPS-20 by the late Jay Lepreau, and later KCC,
> written by Kok Chen at Stanford and significantly extended for systems
> programming work by Ken Harrenstien at SRI International), and PCL
> (Programmable Command Language, a DEC compiler available only on
> TOPS-20). Once C became available on the PDP-10 and VAX, it was
> clearly the language of choice for software tools, and assembly code
> was a dead end with the growth in minicomputer and microprocessor
> architectures.
>
> For scientific work, all of our coding was in Fortran, and SFTRAN3 (a
> structured Fortran developed at JPL in Pasadena, and machine
> translated to standard Fortran 66 and 77), with only low-level
> primitives for character and bit processing, and system calls, written
> in assembly code.
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254
> <(801)%20581-5254>                  -
> - University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148
> <(801)%20581-4148>                  -
> - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail:
> beebe at math.utah.edu  -
> - 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org
> beebe at computer.org -
> - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL:
> http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
>
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