[ih] Confusion in the RFCs

[Darius Kazemi]

When I was researching early RFCs I encountered all sorts of errors in the
various official handbooks and guides from the time, particularly when it
came to references. Understandable, of course, this was a mountain of
sometimes manually collated information.

There was a process of digitizing and normalizing the RFCs that happened in
(I believe) the early to mid 1990s. Sometimes errors were introduced in
that digitization process. Here's an example I found of a flow chart that
the person drawing ASCII art got backwards compared to the original source:

https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata/rfc194

I often go back to scans of original documents. The Computer History Museum
has Jake Feinler's SRI/NIC document collection and they can be contacted
and asked to scan RFC 542, which they will also put online. I asked them to
do this for RFCs 1-40, which are now available here:

https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/600000210/

Of course even the NIC back in the 70s got things wrong from time to time,
as was the case with RFC-32, where the (likely) wrong document was assigned
that number based on an error probably originating at the NIC:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-flanagan-rfc32alt-00

The only way to be reasonably certain what the "real" RTC 542 was would be
to cross reference multiple paper collections of RFCs from the time,
confirm that they all are the same document, and then one could conclude
that yeah, probably the 1978 handbook just had an error in it.

I tend to agree with Jim Carpenter - while John is correct that the 1978
handbook was not intending to refer to a 1980s document, Jim is correct
that reference errors do exist not infrequently in these handbooks.

-Darius

On Fri, Sep 5, 2025, 8:35 AM John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> DC-Algol was the Algol they did for the transition form the 5500 to the
> 6700. We had serial #2 of the 6700.
>
> Never heard of CANDE. Was it a local development. The OS was called the
> MCP.
>
> Yes, it was an impressive machine.
>
> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 09:35, Nigel Roberts via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > I used a B6700 as a Chemistry undergrad at Warwick University in 1975
> aged 17. (In fact it was what really got me into a lifetime of computer
> science as I left there after a year and went to Essex to do Comp. Sci.)
> >
> >
> > The monitor was called CANDE and it indeed had the coherence and
> elegance that mentioned in respect of the 5500 earlier in this thread.
> >
> > The OS was written in a variant of ALGOL called, IIRC, DC-ALGOL.
> >
> > On 05/09/2025 14:20, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> >> 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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