SOCKET CODE & alex%nerwin.uucp at umbc3.umbc.edu

[Alex S. Crain]

	I was wandering through the process table on umbc3 today and found
several processes that looked like "uux - nerwin!uucp". Closer inspection
reveiled that people are still sending mail to umbc3!nerwin!alex, so I 
thought that a clarification is in order.

	nerwin's disk died about 2 months ago, and has yet to be repaired.
I've got a good price from at&t on a repair ($250 for 67eg miniscribe), but
I'm broke right now, so it sits. I don't know where mail to nerwin goes,
but I don't see it (I assume that it gets bounced).

	As far as the socket stuff goes, nerwin died right after I finished
version 1.1, so I don't even know what works/barfs in the code. Bradley Smith
has been working on it for the last couple of months, and has added lots of
neat stuff like support for select() and ptys. I expect nerwin to be up by
november, and I'll be back into the code by christmas, but until then the
code is sort of an orphan. I still consider it to be my baby, but right now
I can't even accept bug fixes because I can't verify them :-(.

	If you're wondering where all this is going, the idea is that the
socket driver will support a serial line network, which in turn will support
the standard internet netwrong utilities running over SLIP. The video 
hardware mod built by Brian Botton makes an X server a viable option, so
I presume that one will be forthcoming, using the socket driver for IPC.

	I've done some research into the serial line driver in the unix-pc,
and I should have something up by say, spring, in terms of a AF_INET socket
type, in the mean time the AF_UNIX sockets are pretty complete. I am also
interested in an ethernet interface if someone will loan me a pair of
ethernet cards ...

	In the mean time, I've set up umbc3 for anonymous ftp to distribute
what I have. The pub directory here contains most of the stuff that I've
done for the unix-pc, ie:

	pub/3b1port.shar	The 3b1 code forKoyto Common Lisp
	pub/3b1prolog.shar	The diffs to make SBProlog work on a 3b1
	pub/dis.tar.Z		The dissassembler (still lacking a man page)
	pub/gcc-cpp.Z.uu	a gcc-cpp binary for bootstrapping gcc
	pub/ipctut.tar.Z	a socket tutorial (roff format)
	uipc-1.1.tar.Z		version 1.1 of the socket code
	uipc-1.2.tar.Z		version 1.2 of the socket code (the latest?)

umbc3's inet # is [130.85.1.3]. I'll be happy to add stuff to this list, if
you have anything that needs a home.

-- 
#################################		:alex.
#Disclamer: Anyone who agrees   #    University of Maryland Baltimore County
#with me deserves what they get.#	alex at umbc3.umbc.edu
#################################