[ih] Packet Radio Software

[Lawrence Stewart]

I was peripherally involved in the PRNet activities in the Bay Area and went to a few quarterly meetings at SRI.  (I built an 1822 interface for the Alto and we used it to encapsulate PUP packets for transit over PRNet, linking two Xerox sites in Palo Alto*)

The radios and radio software was built by Rockwell (nee Collins Radio) and my youthful read on the vibes at meetings was that the SRI/Arpa people did not think much of the software development practices.  One story I heard was that Rockwell management insisted on very tight control of the top secret source code.  This meant that the master copy was to be kept on punch cards in the manager’s office.

So it seems unlikely to me that the radios would be reloading their software from neighbors, at least until after other folks were able to make modifications.

* http://www.watersprings.org/pub/rfc/ien/ien78.pdf <http://www.watersprings.org/pub/rfc/ien/ien78.pdf>

-L