// DicentraSoftware.doc, HGM, 28-Dec-83  1:38:40


There are 3 parts of the software: the microcode, the germ, and the environment the client program gets to use.  The Klamath microcode seems reasonable stable.  The normal microcode package I use fits in 4K and includes SDLC support for phone lines.  Some time I'll probably try to squeeze in support for TTYs.

The germ can boot from a 10MB net, a 3MB net, or a phone line.  (Booting over a phone line is a bit tricky, the phone line needs a NS net number.)  The germ gets the default boot file and location from the EEROM.  The Alt-Boot button can be used to override this.

The main environment is based upon UtilityPilot.  Any reasonable program that doesn't use a disk or display (or unreasonable amounts of VM) will work.  Several months ago I could get a Gateway into 256K words.  Since then the 512K Memory boards have arrived and I have been adding any modules that looked interesting.  Now (13-Nov) I'm down to 900 free pages. 

If you have all the pieces on your disk, you can be running a new boot file in 5 minutes.  TeleDebugging works fine.  I have a hack that gets you to 915 if the Alt-Boot button is down for several seconds.  I'm currently using a derivative of Othello's command scanner.  It's ugly, but it works.  I'll probably try to switch to the Tajo Exec when I get time to pry it apart from the disk.

The main problem with running a PupGateway without a disk is that people expect a boot server as part of the package.  We have ducked that for the Pup world by including a fake boot server.  It "forwards" boot requests to a server on another net.  Booting works fine through gateways.  I'll probably do the same for NS booting one of these days.  (It's a bit more complicated because we need to work around a bug in the IOP's EPROMs.)