NetBSD

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NetBSD
NetBSD imps.jpg
Of course it runs NetBSD!
Architecture: multiplatform
This Version: NetBSD 5.0.2 (February 7, 2010)
Date Released: 1993


NetBSD is a bit of a blessing for many hobbyists, as it includes support for the VAX, Amiga, 68k Macs, various Sun systems like the Sun-3 as well as a wide variety of toasters and the HP300. You might want to check the entire list at the NetBSD list of ports. There's even some discussion of a port to PDP-10s!

NetBSD started out as a derivative of 386 BSD, as at the time it was a collection of patches to 386BSD. People grew dissatisfied with the lack of updates with 386BSD, and how the patchkit kept getting larger and larger & unwieldy leading to the various authors of the patches to start their own fork of 386BSD, called NetBSD as it was created on the 'internet'. NetBSD focuses on portability and simplicity of the code.

It's worth noting that a political fight within NetBSD led to the formation of OpenBSD.

Version 0.8, 0.9, 0.9a

These early versions were heavily based on 386 BSD + patchkits and contained Net/2 files subject to USL scrutiny. Due to an agreement with USL these distributions are no longer officially available and maybe even lost to history. According to Charles M. Hannum ", the agreement is very clear, and nobody cares about that early code history any more--so this is all water under the bridge.". Historians beg to differ. If you have a copy, please leave a note.

As we locate the older versions I'll add information about each release here.

Version 1.2

This version restored support for the VAX Platform. Until we have any hope of getting our hands on NetBSD 0.8 or 0.9 there isn't much interest to me in 1.0 & 1.1 as they don't support the VAX. Installing NetBSD 1.2 on the SIMH MicroVAX II

Version 5.0.2

As of November 17 2010 this is the current version. The exiting change (well to me) was the inclusion of unit tests in the OS so that users of less used ports (VAX) can certify that their OS is performing as it should be...

Installing NetBSD 5.0.2 on the SIMH MicroVAX II

other

Running NetBSD on a VAX

games

NetBSD 1.2 included the following games:

adventure       cfscores        larn            quiz            tetris
arithmetic      chess           mille           rain            trek
atc             cribbage        monop           random          wargames
backgammon      dm              morse           robots          worm
banner          factor          number          rogue           worms
battlestar      fish            phantasia       rot13           wump
bcd             fortune         pig             sail
boggle          hack            pom             snake
caesar          hangman         ppt             snscore
canfield        hide            primes          teachgammon

what runs

I would imagine that NetBSD's 1.2 edition's GCC 2.7.2 could run quite a bit of software.... I just found out that NetBSD 1.2 does *NOT* include curses... so that means no lynx!

So in the interim, this is what I've built: