[ih] NCP and TCP implementations

[Clem Cole]

I can offer the history on the first VAX/VMS implementation.  Stan Smith
and I wrote that IP/TCP stack and userspace commands in BLISS at Tektronix
in the winter of 79-80.  I later gave it my old cronies at CMU, who hacked
on it (primarily adding the SMTP mailer interface which we had not yet
written).

Stan and I would have used C if we had had a C compiler for the Vax; but
DEC had not written/released one yet (at least a year or two away).  So,
our choices at the time were BLISS, Fortran, Assembler (and maybe Pascal).
Stan was pushing a little for the latter two as he was coming from NOS and
the CDC systems were Fortran and Assemblker were king, plus we already had
licenses for them from DEC on the system.   But being a CMU person, I
already knew BLISS  and been using for a number of years on the Vaxen at
CMU, and convinced him that BLISS would be easier (if I remember correctly,
this was around the time when the larger part of DEC had been using BLISS
for all most of its userspace code and that was part of my argument).   We
did have to cons up $5k for a compiler license (IIRC management was none
too happy about the unexpected $5K).  But I taught it to Stan and off we
went.  Funny, that was probably the last BLISS code I ever wrote.

BTW:   Vint, there was an early 36-bit C compiler for the PDP-10 done at
MIT originally for ITS, I want to say '75/'76 timeframe (it was a master
project for Alan Synder IIRC:
https://github.com/PDP-10/Snyder-C-compiler/blob/master/MAC-TR-149.pdf).
It was moved to TOPS and TENEX; but the code it generated was not that
stellar (check out about page 26 or so of the report).   So at the time,
Assembler and BLISS (and LISP at MIT) were the primary systems programming
languages for the 10s.

Clem

On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 2:15 AM vinton cerf via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Steve Kirsch asks in what languages NCP and TCP were written.
>
> The Stanford first TCP implementation was done in BCPL by Richard Karp.
> Another version was written for PDP-11/23 by Jim Mathis but not clear in
> what language. Tenex was probably done in C at BBN. Was 360 done in PL/1??
> Dave Clark did one for IBM PC (assembly language/??)
>
> Other recollections much appreciated.
>
> vint
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