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Lists and Hercules and LSoft
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Hello!
Back when Hercules was still growing up and the original list was not as big as it is now, I made an interesting suggestion; Basically we could find out if the list server software from LSoft was still available from VM, we could track down a copy and get to run on Hercules running VM/370 Release 6. Naturally this was before I found out that two things did happen, one of them was that LSoft made the bad decision to get out of the list server on the appropriate IBM mainframe that we would be emulating for VM/370 Release 6. The second was that of how such a mainframe would find itself connected to the Internet. And naturally running that release. It's possible that IBM did create a preliminary stack for networking via TCP/IP protocols but, sadly a lot of the software we would need is not available. I found out about LSoft making that mistake at a trade show for the PC about the same time I met an R/370. The R/370 made a better impression than the droids from LSoft. Who here (now) would know which release of VM prior to the Z Branded releases did have networking available? I do know that Cliff Stoll mentions what we run and the MVS crowd in his book. Oh and Dave M? Please stop staring. The group does need all six to make things work. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@... "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." |
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Gregg Levine wrote:
I approached Lsoft about this some years ago. As far as I recall, the response back then was fairly positive but there were a number of snags. Firstly, Listserv for VM was archived on old tapes and no working drive was available to read them. Secondly, it is not going to run on VM/370 R6 without a lot of work. It's about 30 years since I last saw Listserv on VM but as far as I recall, it is mostly written in REXX. I suspect it makes a lot of use of EXECIO which I don't think we have at present. There are other smaller issues but I think this one is the showstopper at the moment. The good news is that having TCP/IP connectivity on VM/370 R6 is not a requirement to run Listserv. On VM, Listserv exchanged mail in the form of spool files with a mail transfer agent (such as Lsoft Lmail or the Crosswell Mailer) on the same VM system or with an off-system MTA by sending the spool files over NJE links to other systems. The latter is possible now on VM/370 R6 so mail can be transferred to an external system which has TCP/IP connectivity where it can be gatewayed into the SMTP world. I have an NJE link set up to my VMS system (running HUJI-NJE) which can get mail to and from the outside by routing it through the PMDF MTA on VMS. This is a bit fragile yet and there are issues with preventing spam etc but it seems to work most of the time. None of this is is likely to turn into a viable replacement for Yahoo groups before they go away (although Listserv can host files in general as well as mailing lists) but it is fun to play with. Regards, Peter Coghlan. |
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Hello!
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Oh okay good reason. back them they just did not want to explain what did happen. Did they say how old these tapes were? And what sort of drive would have been used for them? I think Dave M here must have the style of tape drive it would have been used on. Oh and Peter funny thing, right after the message I am replying to, is the request from the list-bot for me to confirm your message. Dave they are done. It worked, and the target won't be able to do anything for a week. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@... "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." On Sat, Oct 19, 2019 at 3:00 AM Peter Coghlan <groups@...> wrote:
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Gregg Levine wrote:
I finally managed to locate the email exchange in question in my mail archives. It turned out to be from nine years ago and unfortunately, my memory has been playing tricks on me :-( It was copies of old BITEARN NODES files that Lsoft had stashed on old 6250bpi round tapes, not old copies of Listserv software. Unfortunately, I have no information about how Lsoft feels about hobbyists running old versions of Listserv after all. Sorry for raising hopes. Regards, Peter Coghlan. |
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