Bulletins from the Pacific Packet Radio Society - page 063

We will ship him the beta boards for his area, as well as protocol documentation, listings and PROMS. We will have on the beta board a basic TAPR protocol and VADCG protocol, and will want them tested. Some beta sites will also be involved in higher level protocols; Bob Blanc of the NBS is very interested in our beta testing, which can provide him the service of test sites for the protocols they are "pushing". He is sending us, for dissemination to the beta sites, complete documentation and listings, in both C and Pascal, as well as Pascal pseudocode logic information, the Internet Protocol, two of the five TCP's (#2 and #4), and the session control protocol. We will be in contact with the bureau via regular X.25 connections. Would you like to see any of this code, or would you be interested in beta testing some of this material? To keep the other standard covered, Gordon Beattie WB2CAM and the guys at RATS are going to develop a clean implementation of X.25 and X.75 for the board, which will allow some very good comparisons between their beta site and others.

The coordinator would have these tools for modification, but would also pay the price; we need accurate performance reporting and prompt protocol alterations throughout the user group. The large number of VADCG boards running the non-station-to-station protocol makes San Francisco by far the most ideal beta test for TAPR boards operating in the presence of a VADCG network, and I would like people who really understand the protocol to check on the code Margaret and I are writing

I look forward to seeing you in several weeks. Talk to you soon.

73, den

FILE QST. 82.05.02.0.KD2S

To: All groups
From: KD2S

On May 2, the TAPR TNC board became aware of itself for the first time. Installed in PROM is a complete FORTH interpreter, capable of communicating with RAM, non-volatile RAM, and the 1/0 chips.

This move was not planned originally, but was decided on by having the hardware development team (Lyle) trying to bring the primitives up using only assembler. Initial efforts using the new FORTH show Lyle's productivity to increase by about ten-fold ! (a very subjective test).

This FORTH will speak to our AIM65 developmental system and a couple of Apples, allowing us to burn PROMS. Our first protocol will be ready this month. VADCG and AMRAD protocols are still due to be released with beta test. Check next month's AMRAD newsletter for revised (read sensible) TAPR protocol.

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