[ih] Confusion in the RFCs

Fri Sep 5 06:20:13 PDT 2025

I don't think there was a Burrough's machine anywhere on the UCLA campus.
I would have known if there was.  Vint and I were freshmen at Stanford and
UCLA respectively starting in fall 1961.  I had hung around UCLA for more
than a year before that, and I was pretty aware of essentially all the
machines on campus.  I was also aware of the Burrough's machine at Stanford
and its elegant architecture.

It's possible there was a Burrough's machine somewhere else in Los Angeles,
but I wasn't aware of it.  UCLA was "blessed" with three IBM 7094s, each
run by a different organization.  The culture surrounding each machine was
distinct and not particularly friendly toward any of the others.  In
1965-66 I participated in an ARPA-sponsored attempt to build a three node
network connecting the three computing centers.  It failed for multiple
reasons, one of which was the hostility between the three centers.
(Nonetheless, I learned a lot.)

Steve

On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 8:44 AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:

> It inspired everything we did. It was a revelation. That is why our PDP-11
> OS language was called PDP-11 Espol, their OS language.
>
> I knew there was one around UCLA somewhere and at Stanford. Knuth wrote
> the early Algol compiler for it. It was the first system to use a stack for
> procedures, as well as arithmetic. Tagged architecture, descriptor based
> memory. The system had a coherence I have never seen again.
>
> Trivial example: 48-bit word. Floating point format was a 39-bit mantissa
> (sign bit, 8-bit exponent) but the decimal point was at the right end of
> the word. Integers were merely unnormalized floating point numbers. No
> integer to real conversion. It just worked. Also, it was pointed out to me
> recently that there was a hardware operator that convert an integer to BCD.
> A 39-bit binary integer would convert within 48 bits.  (The Burros 3500 was
> a COBOL machine and all decimal including the addressing!) Burros was
> architecture-agnostic. One could go on and on.
>
> Why can’t we build systems like that any more.
>
>
> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:23, vinton cerf <vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I used the B5500 from 1961 to 1965 while a math undergrad at Stanford.
> Really amazing instruction set.
>
> V
>
> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025, 08:15 John Day via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> I agree and yes, drafts of what became standards were usually sent out as
>> RFCs to make sure the author had done what the group agreed to.  But the
>> majority of RFCs in those early days were really Comments, which I thought
>> was a great idea and that agreed documents should have a different status.
>>
>> I agree with you that it was quite odd that Host-Host Protocol became NCP
>> and not HHP. (Although for some reason, NCP rolls of the tongue easier.)
>> In fact, even NCP is a bit of an odd choice.  We were using the Burroughs
>> 5500* at the time and its OS is called the MCP, Master Control Program. So
>> it always seemed to be related, although that system was relatively unknown
>> in ARPANET circles. Although I have read elsewhere that it had an
>> influence, even early on, on Hollywood, so it being coined in the LA area
>> perhaps isn’t that far off. (Much earlier than the use of MCP in TRON.)
>>
>> Take care,
>> John
>>
>> * And of course, B5500 was the finest system design ever done and nearly
>> decade ahead of everyone else.
>>
>> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:05, Steve Crocker <steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > FWIW, I was slightly bemused to see the host-host protocol (later
>> called NCP) published as a standard outside of the RFC series.  I don't
>> recall seeing a formal decision to do that.  In my mind, although the RFCs
>> certainly included drafts and preliminary versions of protocols, it seemed
>> natural to me they would also include the culmination of that process.  The
>> term "Request for Comments" was intended to convey a spirit of openness and
>> invitation but it was not intended to be restrictive or exclusionary.  It
>> was a pro forma requirement that each document be labeled "Request for
>> Comments," but it was not intended to exclude completed pieces of work.
>> >
>> > Steve
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 7:56 AM John Day via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
>> wrote:
>> >> Well, the Telnet meeting (in 1972) occurred considerably before the
>> FTP meeting* (Mar 73), so I am not so sure it was a typo.
>> >>
>> >> As I said before back then, RFCs were Requests for *Comments*, not
>> Internet Standards, which always seemed pretty absurd. Official documents
>> were published separately.
>> >>
>> >> Take care,
>> >> John
>> >>
>> >> * Where Padlipsky made his famous comment: “Sometimes when changing
>> apples into oranges, you get lemons.” ;-)
>> >>
>> >> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 06:17, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com
>> <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com>> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> > Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.
>> >> >
>> >> > But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
>> >> > TELNET was just a typo.
>> >> >
>> >> > Jim
>> >> >
>> >> > On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36 AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net
>> <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May
>> 1983.
>> >> >> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on
>> the official Aug 1973 version.
>> >> >>
>> >>
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