It is still downloading but there is ‘enough’ here now to make it somewhat worthwhile, and announcable…
http://oldlinux.superglobalmegacorp.com/Linux.old/
I guess just because someone else saved something from the olde bit bucket in the sky doesn’t mean you should take a copy as well as it could all easily disappear.
AKAÂ shiningsilence.com, right here.
Le sigh. Â I knew I should have wgetted it or even rsync’d it.
I’ve just found out about a new release candidate version of SIMH.
You can download the source code here.
I haven’t built it, or even looked at it so I really can’t comment on it.
It’s been a long while since I’ve posted anything VAX BSD related.  So I found this ISO image a while back that had all these old versions of BSD on them, but sadly many of them are incomplete, missing parts, and give really no clue on how to use them.  There is even some duplication thrown in there just to complicate things further.  So I figured I’d try one of them, an interim release of 4 BSD and see if I could just overlay a newer release version and see what I get…
VAX780 simulator V3.8-1
Listening on port 23 (socket 156)
loading ra(0,0)boot
Boot
: ra(0,0)vmunix
215688+63964+69764 start 0xf98
4.1c BSD UNIX #2: Tue Aug 28 09:39:12 PDT 1984
real mem = 8384512
avail mem = 7036928
using 148 buffers containing 838656 bytes of memory
mcr0 at tr1
mcr1 at tr2
uba0 at tr3
hk0 at uba0 csr 177440 vec 210, ipl 15
rk0 at hk0 slave 0
rk1 at hk0 slave 1
uda0 at uba0 csr 172150 vec 774, ipl 15
ra0 at uda0 slave 0
ra1 at uda0 slave 1
zs0 at uba0 csr 172520 vec 224, ipl 15
ts0 at zs0 slave 0
dz0 at uba0 csr 160100 vec 300, ipl 15
mba0 at tr8
root on ra0
WARNING: should run interleaved swap with >= 2Mb
Automatic reboot in progress...
Tue Aug 28 09:54:53 PDT 1984
/dev/rra0a: 836 files, 6010 used, 1419 free (35 frags, 173 blocks)
/dev/rra0h: 6598 files, 41780 used, 320080 free (160 frags, 79980 blocks)
Tue Aug 28 09:54:58 PDT 1984
local daemons: telnetd ftpd tftpd syslog sendmail.
preserving editor files
clearing /tmp
standard daemons: update cron accounting berknet mail printer.
starting network: rshd rexecd rlogind rwhod routed.
Tue Aug 28 09:55:00 PDT 1984
ucbmonet login: root
Last login: Tue Aug 28 09:44:44 on tty00
4.1c BSD UNIX #2: Tue Aug 28 09:39:12 PDT 1984
Master source now lives here; freeze your 4.1c stuff now.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein
monet#
Pretty cool. Â And oddly enough googling around doesn’t seem to find much about people running 4.1c BSD, but it is significant with the first version of sendmail being bundled, and rogue.
The release also includes TCP/IP support but I haven’t the slightest idea how to use it. Â I suppose reading the instructions is key. Â But I thought I’d share this little fossil first.
For those who want to try it, you can download it here. Â It’s using SIMH, so if you aren’t running Windows, bring your own VAX 11/780 and you’ll be good to go.
For all of you who have loved the old days of printed docs.  The fine people at HP Computer Museum have scanned the Microsoft OS/2 1.1 manuals.
Ralph Lipe?
Wow 1991 was so long ago. Â I didn’t get pulled into Linux until the summer of 1992 (0.12 I think?), but wow I’ve sure had my ups & downs with Linux but it certainly had a major impact on everything we do. Â Even if it is ‘kind of fringe’ it is in all kinds of things all around us all over the place. Â No doubt the whole 20 year thing has been covered pretty much everywhere.
You would be kidding yourself if you have used anything on the internet and not had any interaction with a Linux machine in some manner. Â Heck even this blog runs on a Linux VM.
While Linux 0.10 may have been the first ‘usable’ version to many, 0.11 is the first version that has been preserved. Â I had even did a Qemu bundle of 0.11 that oldlinux.org had put together as I find Qemu runs Linux better, and of course faster than Bochs.
So here we are and I thought I’d update the Qemu and add in a personal favorite this time…
Download it from sourceforge.
Sometimes taking a binary and sending it through a text only medium (email) is a damned handy thing. Â And sometimes you are dealing with old crap and being able to decode what you’ve just built would help a TONNE.
Luckily uudecode already exists. Â So before I forget it, the link to a nice BSD version that’ll compile on any good UNIX and MS-DOS system is available here.
I have documented the install steps back here, a long while back.  However recently I did get a request for a binary for this for someone to try to load up  on a physical PDP-11.  The steps sure are duanting and of course time consuming for a first time user, so while I was building dungeon again, I thought I should take this opertunity to package this up and make it more accesable for everyone.
This is the output of my ‘effort’ although the real thanks to this goes to Bob Supnik ,not only for writing SIMH making it possible, but also for porting Dungeon to Fortran way back then.
Extract the archive using 7zip, then run pdp11.exe and it should boot you up into RT-11. Â Then just type in
RUN DUNGEON
And you should be teleported to the open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door…
Open Mailbox
This is all about the raw block devices. Â I don’t think it’ll really matter for 99% of you, but for people who want raw disk access this is a MUST.
I’ve used this patch and rebuilt everything.
i386/x86_64 & everything else.
Hopefully it’ll work..!