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From: fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: talk problems between SUN and uVAX - (nf)
Message-ID: <16784@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Thu, 8-Jan-87 05:20:22 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.16784
Posted: Thu Jan  8 05:20:22 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 8-Jan-87 19:19:28 EST
References: <6300001@iaoobelix.UUCP>
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Organization: University of California at Berkeley
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Sadly, the pinhead who wrote talk originally did not know that there
is such a thing as "network byte order" in ARPA Internet land, and the
talk program passes binary C structures around in packets to itself.
Unfortunately, this means that

	a) you can only speak "talk" protocol to a machine with the
		same byte order as the one you're on
or
	b) we all agree to speak "talk" protocol in VAX byte order
		which is different from just about everybody, and
		modify the talk program on non-VAXen...

"talk" as distributed with 4.2 BSD UNIX is a badly written program.
I am given to understand that the new version which is distributed with
4.3 BSD UNIX is much better behaved (and among other things, it is also
backward compatible).

	Erik E. Fair	ucbvax!fair	fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu