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Gosha

TIL there's a project to resurrect the MIT CADR #Lisp Machine: tumbleweed.nu/lm-3/, with a release announcement containing this enticing snippet: "System 300 contains numerous fixes that make it usable on the Global Chaosnet."

I have close to no idea what is going on there, but dammit, I can't help wanting to know. The GLOBAL CHAOSNET?!

26 November at 15:41 | Open on merveilles.town
9 comments
Weekend Editor

@gosha

Does it help if I told you we used to have bridge routers from CHAOS to IP/TCP? :-)

26 November at 15:58 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
Gosha

@weekend_editor I have now read that Chaosnet was a kind of local network. A global chaosnet though?!

26 November at 16:27 | Open on merveilles.town
Alfred M. Szmidt

@gosha You know the best way to learn? Ask people. ;-)

While Chaosnet (either protocol, hardware, or network) was mainly used as a LAN at MIT.

The Global Chaosnet is the Chaosnet protocol sent over TCP/IP (and other mediums); allowing "contemporary" Lisp Machines, ITS, and other "period" systems to talk to each other.

We are a few who run things there, allowing us to use network file systems, and other such fun stuff.

@weekend_editor

26 November at 16:31 | Open on mastodon.social
Gosha

@amszmidt @weekend_editor That sounds all kinds of amazing, and I bet I could spend an entire weekend (or more) digging into it. Thank you for explaining!

26 November at 16:54 | Open on merveilles.town
Alfred M. Szmidt

@gosha I now expect you spending a weekend and more digging, and hacking.

:-) And I'm happy to any answer that ensue!

@weekend_editor

26 November at 16:55 | Open on mastodon.social
Alfred M. Szmidt
splatt9990

@gosha @weekend_editor There's a document on it on their website:
tumbleweed.nu/r/lm-3/uv/amber.

the tl;dr is it was a proto-TCP/IP ethernet combination that was hacked together in the 70's to allow various lisp machines to network together and support a shared filesystem. The 'Global Chaosnet' refers to an effort to tunnel chaosnet protocols in modern TCP/IP connections to allow old networking programs to communicate over the modern internet

26 November at 18:01 | Open on fosstodon.org
Weekend Editor

@gosha
@amszmidt
@splatt9990

Yes, that's more or less right. We used chaosnet at MIT, and that carried over to the lisp machines.

Chaosnet was a lot simpler to use, as I recall from the experince of writing network applications like 40 years ago.

IP-TCP was only just beginning to become popular in those days. We had chaosnet to IP-TCP bridges, basically routers that could speak either protocol. (And I have a hilarious story about an MIT network admin who didn't know the difference between a router & a bridge, and didn't know what a time-domain reflectometer was.)

Then around 1986 or so we had native IP-TCP on lisp machines.

Symbolics.com was in fact the first .com site on the internet.

@gosha
@amszmidt
@splatt9990

Yes, that's more or less right. We used chaosnet at MIT, and that carried over to the lisp machines.

Chaosnet was a lot simpler to use, as I recall from the experince of writing network applications like 40 years ago.

IP-TCP was only just beginning to become popular in those days. We had chaosnet to IP-TCP bridges, basically routers that could speak either protocol. (And I have a hilarious story about an MIT network admin who didn't know the difference between a router...

26 November at 18:53 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
Alfred M. Szmidt

@gosha Which reminds me .. I should update the main page and mention System 301 which was just released 😃

26 November at 16:36 | Open on mastodon.social
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