3 ms·

2.11BSD_X44: A 2.11 BSD that's still receiving patches, including x86 support

30 points by jmmv 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
AStonesThrow 2y ago
That's wild. <4BSD was never on my radar at all, from my first encounters in 1990. Morally, this isn't really 2.11 anymore after so much backporting and updating, so my questions would be, what's the utility of such a platform, if not nostalgia or legacy support? Not clear which arches are supported, aside from i386. My love affair with Open/NetBSD was partially sparked by its enormous roster of cool hardware support.
- bediger4000 2y ago
  1989-90 you could still dial in to "Nyx", a PDP-11 at University of Denver, running 2.? BSD. The big attraction was Usenet access, Nyx probably got it via uucp.
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    Universities maintained legacy systems for sure, but in 1989, 4.3 was already a mature, gold standard, for the right hardware. Personally I was put on SVR3/3B2, and SunOS on IPX/SLC type systems, along with an awareness of all kinds of other stuff available there, such as a "recreational" 4.3BSD VAX.
    - aap_ 2y ago
      2.11BSD is still a popular choice if you have a PDP-11 (or are emulating one).
    - bediger4000 2y ago
      Oddly, I dialed in to Nyx from a 3b2. Paid extra for SVr3 to get that newfangled Korn shell.
    - kjs3 2y ago
      Was there some CDC gear laying around in the back, cause if so we might have gone to the same place (where I ran some of the 4.3/VAX, recreationally).
retrac 2y ago
2.x BSD was also ported to MIPS and some other archs a while back: https://github.com/RetroBSD/retrobsd https://github.com/RetroBSD/retrobsd I have periodically wondered why we didn't see more of that. It's a small monolithic Unix with the complete stack, including (now rather ancient) TCP/IP networking. Fits in 1 MB of RAM with room to spare. BSD licenced. From what I remember off the biggest issues are probably that: 1) it is pretty closely tied to the PDP-11 architecture (though not insurmountably) 2) it's pre-ANSI C.
- avmich 2y ago
  Does 2.x BSD really include TCP/IP networking?
  - fanf2 2y ago
    2.11 does https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2.11BSD/sys/netinet/in.c https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2.11BSD/sys/netin... to my surprise 2.9 does as well https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2.9BSD/usr/net/sys/net/in.h https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2.9BSD/usr/net/sy...
  - winocm 2y ago
    Yes. https://github.com/AaronJackson/2.11BSD/blob/main/sys/netinet/tcp.h https://github.com/AaronJackson/2.11BSD/blob/main/sys/netine... Depends on the version though. There's a bunch of patches made to 2.11BSD over the unstoppable march of time. https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/UCB/2.11BSD/Patches/ https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/UCB/2.11BSD/Patch...
somat 2y ago
My understanding is that 2bsd is 16 bit clean, which is most of the reason it is still around. A nice OS to run on your 16-bit micro controllers. However when trying to fact check myself, I found many of the architecture targets are 32-bit, so I may be wrong about this. see also: retrobsd a 2bsd fork https://github.com/RetroBSD/retrobsd https://github.com/RetroBSD/retrobsd
- basementcat 2y ago
  According to this issue https://github.com/TheSledgeHammer/2.11BSD_X44/issues/2 https://github.com/TheSledgeHammer/2.11BSD_X44/issues/2 this fork does not support 16 bit platforms.
- winocm 2y ago
  Also https://github.com/chettrick/discobsd https://github.com/chettrick/discobsd. Updated 2 days ago as of the writing of this post.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kjs3 2y ago
There are also V6 & V7 ports for the x86, but they're much less functional/interesting than 2.x.

30 points by jmmv 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

That's wild. <4BSD was never on my radar at all, from my first encounters in 1990. Morally, this isn't really 2.11 anymore after so much backporting and updating, so my questions would be, what's the utility of such a platform, if not nostalgia or legacy support? Not clear which arches are supported, aside from i386. My love affair with Open/NetBSD was partially sparked by its enormous roster of cool hardware support.

bediger4000 2y ago
1989-90 you could still dial in to "Nyx", a PDP-11 at University of Denver, running 2.? BSD. The big attraction was Usenet access, Nyx probably got it via uucp.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  Universities maintained legacy systems for sure, but in 1989, 4.3 was already a mature, gold standard, for the right hardware. Personally I was put on SVR3/3B2, and SunOS on IPX/SLC type systems, along with an awareness of all kinds of other stuff available there, such as a "recreational" 4.3BSD VAX.
  - aap_ 2y ago
    2.11BSD is still a popular choice if you have a PDP-11 (or are emulating one).
  - bediger4000 2y ago
    Oddly, I dialed in to Nyx from a 3b2. Paid extra for SVr3 to get that newfangled Korn shell.
  - kjs3 2y ago
    Was there some CDC gear laying around in the back, cause if so we might have gone to the same place (where I ran some of the 4.3/VAX, recreationally).

retrac 2y ago

2.x BSD was also ported to MIPS and some other archs a while back: https://github.com/RetroBSD/retrobsd https://github.com/RetroBSD/retrobsd I have periodically wondered why we didn't see more of that. It's a small monolithic Unix with the complete stack, including (now rather ancient) TCP/IP networking. Fits in 1 MB of RAM with room to spare. BSD licenced. From what I remember off the biggest issues are probably that: 1) it is pretty closely tied to the PDP-11 architecture (though not insurmountably) 2) it's pre-ANSI C.

avmich 2y ago
Does 2.x BSD really include TCP/IP networking?
- fanf2 2y ago
  2.11 does https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2.11BSD/sys/netinet/in.c https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2.11BSD/sys/netin... to my surprise 2.9 does as well https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2.9BSD/usr/net/sys/net/in.h https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2.9BSD/usr/net/sy...
- winocm 2y ago
  Yes. https://github.com/AaronJackson/2.11BSD/blob/main/sys/netinet/tcp.h https://github.com/AaronJackson/2.11BSD/blob/main/sys/netine... Depends on the version though. There's a bunch of patches made to 2.11BSD over the unstoppable march of time. https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/UCB/2.11BSD/Patches/ https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/UCB/2.11BSD/Patch...

somat 2y ago

My understanding is that 2bsd is 16 bit clean, which is most of the reason it is still around. A nice OS to run on your 16-bit micro controllers. However when trying to fact check myself, I found many of the architecture targets are 32-bit, so I may be wrong about this. see also: retrobsd a 2bsd fork https://github.com/RetroBSD/retrobsd https://github.com/RetroBSD/retrobsd

basementcat 2y ago
According to this issue https://github.com/TheSledgeHammer/2.11BSD_X44/issues/2 https://github.com/TheSledgeHammer/2.11BSD_X44/issues/2 this fork does not support 16 bit platforms.
winocm 2y ago
Also https://github.com/chettrick/discobsd https://github.com/chettrick/discobsd. Updated 2 days ago as of the writing of this post.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

kjs3 2y ago

There are also V6 & V7 ports for the x86, but they're much less functional/interesting than 2.x.