386BSD

From Computer History Wiki
Revision as of 05:32, 7 May 2009 by Neozeed (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search


386 BSD
386bsd.png
Logging into a 386 BSD system
Type: Multitasking, multiuser
Creator: CSRG, University of California, Berkeley
Architecture: 386 theoretically portable
This Version: 0.1 (1992)
Date Released: 1991


386 BSD was the first time that the Net/2 project was put into a functional release onto commodity hardware, and into the public under the BSD license. This is the starting point for both NetBSD & FreeBSD. While 386 BSD may be of historical significance, it's not up to the challenge of day to day usage.

Where can I get a copy

At the moment the only known place to get a full copy is here: http://www.oldlinux.org/Linux.old/distributions/386BSD/

How do I get this to run?!

386 BSD is difficult to install on real hardware, and emulated hardware is difficult as well. As of now the only known emulator that can run 386 BSD is Bochs 2.4. I'm currently having some issues with it's disktab structure as it keeps placing the swap partition starting at 0 and overwriting itself.

What Runs?

Not terribly much, unpacking the distro tends to corrupt the disk.