Re: Upcoming time boundary events

In article <1014ad8$2jurh$1@dont-email.me>,
Simon Clubley  <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:

On 2025-05-23, Robert A. Brooks <FIRST.LAST@vmssoftware.com> wrote:

On 5/23/2025 14:11, Simon Clubley wrote:
 

The details are vague since it's been several years since I looked at
DECnet Phase IV, but there's a signed integer delta date field somewhere
in DECnet Phase IV (from a base date offset) that overflowed, at least
if you followed the spec, in 2021 (IIRC). I do remember that VMS treated
it as an unsigned integer, hence VMS wasn't affected.
 
I _think_ it was in EVL, but I can't be sure now.

 
I fixed that one; it'll be good until my 100th birthday.
>

>
$ set response/mode=good_natured
>
I wonder if people will have stopped using DECnet Phase IV by then ? :-)
>
These old protocols have a habit of staying around a lot longer than
expected. For example, I suspect somewhere people are still using UUCP,
2780/3780, xmodem, DDCMP, original SNA (not SNA over TCP/IP), etc, ...
>
I wonder how old you have to be to recognise any of the above these days ? :-)

XMODEM is suprisingly common in embedded work, where one often
needs to transfer something (firmware, a kernel, etc) via a UART
or similar to some target device.  I implemented a standalone
"debugger" and boot loader for bringup and development on our
server boards a few weeks ago, and I implemented both XMODEM and
ZMODEM.

The thing boots up and runs a REPL, where users can issue
commands to inspect the state of the system but also manipulate
it in various ways.  Most users use ZMODEM, sending a compressed
RAM disk image (UFS format) or cpio archive, and the tool
receives the image, inflates it, "mounts" the filesystem, and
reads and loads the kernel image out of it, and boots it.

https://github.com/oxidecomputer/bldb/

- Dan C.