[rescue] - hosts.txt from early or mid-1980's

Skeezics Boondoggle skeezicsb at gmail.com
Wed Feb 27 06:39:13 CST 2008


On Mon, 25 Feb 2008, Scott Mickey wrote:

> Before DNS, there was just a single hosts.txt file.
> Everyone downloaded it from SRI-NIC (anon ftp to 10.0.0.73).
> Many RFC's and web pages about the history of DNS describe
> the hosts.txt file. However, I cannot find an actual
> hosts.txt file from the early or mid-1980's.

I'm looking at hardcopy of "DSKB:NETHST.TXT[1,4] on CMU-10A" dated
28-JUN-80 - the entire ARPAnet hosts table on 2.5 pages!  That
predates DNS and, I think TCP/IP as well... back in the days of NCP
and having to "tip" to the IMP directly to then TN (telnet) or FTP
somewhere.   Almost every host listed is a PDP-10 or -11; there's a
PDP-15, several DEC-20s, along with a handful of IBM 360s, a CDC6600
or 7600 here and there, a Nova 800 (PARC, but wasn't MAXC a Dorado?)
and of course MIT-MULTIC (a Honeywell running Multics).

Ah, I miss the days when TENEX roamed the earth and we had to fight
woolly mammoths for food...



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