[ih] Confusion in the RFCs

Sat Sep 6 00:32:07 PDT 2025

John

That's an interesting thing - I didn't know anything of the previous 
history.

CANDE (I may even be misspelling) was the name that was used at UoW for 
the timesharing system. You would log in with an alphabetic username 
(mine was UWMSUAL) and the password was a single fullstop (period) which 
you could then change.  But there wasn't much point in secret passwords 
as they had to urnbe
supplied in card decks on card #2 when submitting batch jobs, and those 
card decks were returned to open pigeon-holes where anyone could read 
them!!!

But I was only there for 7-8 months and it was literally 50 years ago, 
so my memory may be fading.

On 05/09/2025 16:35, John Day 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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