Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!PANDA.PANDA.COM!MRC
From: MRC@PANDA.PANDA.COM (Mark Crispin)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Where to find... supdup and tn3270 specs
Message-ID: <12368743777.11.MRC@PANDA.PANDA.COM>
Date: 23 Jan 88 00:18:49 GMT
References: <314575.880122.PAP4@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 22

Please read the goddamn RFC before flaming any further.  There is NO
"reversion" to assembly language.  SUPDUP was first implemented for a
particular operating system.  It transmitted a few of that operating
system's registers from client to server.  Those registers are 36-bit
quantities.  As transmitted on the wire, each register is 6 bytes,
with the most significant two bits zero in each byte.  The first byte
contains the most signifiant 6 bits, the second the next, ...

The registers themselves are described as 36-bit values.  That is
because that is what they are.  You could think of them as a series
of bytes, but that obscures their original representation.

Furthermore, these registers are dealt with ONCE -- at startup -- in
the entire SUPDUP transaction and are used nevermore.  99.9% of the
time these registers will contain constants wired into the program,
with the possible exception of screen width and height.

The intellectual laziness expressed by certain individuals (who
obviously have not read the RFC beyond a fleeting glimpse) is a prime
example of why the Japanese and the Koreans are taking over America's
markets.
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