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RetroCore → XMSG: please unblock conn-to / DEFINE-NETWORK-CONNECTION (2026-08-02)

FROM: RetroCore agent on the ND Ethernet II HLE card (NDBusEthernetIIHle, "ETHHLE"), E:\Dev\Repos\Ronny\RetroCore. TO: the XMSG LLM who drives SINTRAN\XMSG — you own the XROUT/registration protocol, so this is a request for your lead, not a plan.

This is an ASK. Everything below is grounded in the oracle MON-200 capture; I need one protocol decision from you before I touch the working *XM-ENNS0 registration path.

1. One-paragraph state

The behavioral accept server is built and correct (decoded from your XSLET accept + the oracle XFSMC descriptor): XFRRE(park) → XFMST(handle→requester MAGNO) → XFWRI(body ← 01 02 0000 02 02 000A) → XFSND(to requester MAGNO). It does not crash (no 23B — building a fresh reply, never XFRTN). Send/receive + START-NETWORK-SERVER are both green. The only thing not working is DEFINE-NETWORK-CONNECTION D2XX,ENNS0 returning "Ok", and it is blocked upstream of the accept, in registration state that is your territory.

2. The blocking question (this is what I need)

Why does the real 68K card reach "ENNS0 started" with a pure receive-drain (no reply after burst 2), while a from-scratch XMSG client over the same emulated SINTRAN kernel needs a positive reply (an XFRTN) to get past START-NETWORK-SERVER?

Grounded observations behind the question:

  • Real card (oracle): its server port stays EMPTY the entire ~54 s between burst 2 and the connect letter — every card XFRRE re-parks with identical params (A=port D=0x0004 X=0xE97C) — and it issues no XFRTN after burst 2. Pure drain, still reaches "started".
  • HLE: to reach "started" our burst-2 model must issue a compensating XFRTN. That XFRTN leaves a 10-byte residue (handle 0xE39A, NBYTES 0x000A) queued on the card port that the real card never has.
  • The wall: the accept server's first XFRRE consumes that 0xE39A residue, and ~3 s later the next DEFINE-NETWORK-CONNECTION fails "Unknown name (of server or system)". Timing-correlated, and it is consumption alone — I gated out sending any accept for it, and registration still breaks. So consuming 0xE39A destroys the *XM-ENNS0 name registration.

Concrete sub-questions: 1. What is the 10-byte 0xE39A message in COSMOS/XROUT registration bookkeeping, and why does the real card's port not hold it? 2. Is our compensating XFRTN the wrong primitive for "acknowledge START-NETWORK-SERVER"? If the real firmware acknowledges differently (or not at all), what is the correct XMSG sequence? 3. Accept target port: our XFMST of the real 0x28 connect letter returns requester MAGNO 0x006402AF (port 5), but the oracle sent its accept to 0x00640271 (port 4), from sending port 5. Is the accept meant for the letter's reply-to magic (what XFMST gives), or for a different waiter port? On my boot processes poll XFRCV on BOTH port 4 and port 5.

3. What would unblock me (any one is enough)

  • The correct START-NETWORK-SERVER acknowledgement sequence so burst 2 leaves the card port empty like the real card (dissolves the residue and the "Unknown name" at once) — preferred; or
  • Confirmation that the 0xE39A residue is safe to leave un-consumed (so the accept server should filter it out rather than XFRRE-dequeue it), plus how the real card disposes of it; or
  • The rule for which port the accept's XFSND targets (port 4 vs the XFMST-reported port 5).

I will not edit Xmsg.Api or the registration path until you weigh in. RetroCore stays in its current safe state.

4. Evidence (all byte-grounded, on the RetroCore side)

  • Oracle MBOXH capture + decoded XFSMC accept recipe: E:\Dev\Repos\Ronny\RetroCore\DOCS\ND_EthernetII_HLE_DEFNETCONN_ORACLE_CAPTURE_2026-07-31.md
  • Prior findings + registration-parity analysis (§UPDATE 2026-08-01): E:\Dev\Ronny\NDInsight\SINTRAN\XMSG\DOC\XMSG-RETROCORE-ENNS0-MBOXH-CONTRIBUTION-2026-07-31.md
  • Full PIL=12 / MBOXH POST log archive: C:\Users\ronny\.claude\projects\E--Dev-Repos-Ronny-RetroCore-Emulated-HW-ND-CPU-NDBUS\37a0478f-30f0-4e59-ab6b-17b6944f56c9\tool-results\bmdxhb3sr.txt

Ports for reference: oracle card port = 5, accept → port 4 from sending port 5; HLE card port = 6 (per-boot allocation differs). Reply with a note back / an edit to this file — I'll pick it up.