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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yeshua.marcam.com!zip.eecs.umich.edu!panix!not-for-mail From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: BSD on VAXstation 2000 Date: 28 Sep 1994 03:14:36 -0400 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC Lines: 44 Message-ID: <36b54s$mm1@panix2.panix.com> References: <35pg6k$j4v@gwen.fwi.uva.nl> <BRLEWIS.94Sep22113911@joy.mit.edu> <360d6c$1mj@panix2.panix.com> <VIXIE.94Sep26163922@gw.home.vix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix2.panix.com In article <VIXIE.94Sep26163922@gw.home.vix.com>, Paul A Vixie <vixie@gw.home.vix.com> wrote: >>DECWRL ported 4.3BSD to the MV2000 and 3100, too. It's a real shame DEC was >>too stingy to ever contribute the needed code back to CSRG. > >Eh? Having worked at DECWRL from 1988..1993 I would have known if this had >been done. WRL ported 4.2BSD to their non-product Titan machines, and >later on ported Sprite to the DECstation 3100, but there was never a VAX >port. In fact there would be no reason to port 4.3BSD to the MV2000/MV3100 >since those machines were all dogs (IMHO). I personally began a port of Oh, hey, sorry for the confusion! Back when the MV2000/MV3100 were much newer, and Brian Reid was simultaneously looking for a home machine for his mother (who was either then or shortly thereafter my math teacher; the dates get fuzzy in my head) I recall conversations about running "BSD" on it. He must have meant the MIT port, or Ultrix, though I thought I recalled those conversations being from a BSD _instead_ of Ultrix standpoint, along the lines of "we run BSD instead of Ultrix on most stuff at WRL anyway...". It's becoming clear to me that this is all tremendously more fuzzy in my head than I thought it was, and I had no business posting based upon it.... There was *definitely* a MIT port of 4.3-Reno, and maybe something a bit later, to the MV2000 and MV3100, and I distinctly recall it not being available even with an Ultrix source license, presumably for DEC-imposed reasons. [...] >Please don't say bad things about DECWRL. They are a small island of sanity >in the belly of a great mad whale and they need all the good vibes they can >get. I really, really didn't mean to leave people with the impression that I think bad thoughts about DECWRL. I don't think much of DEC or DEC's licensing policies, but I think the world of WRL. When I was under the strong impression that WRL had ported 4.3 to the MV2000, I assumed that the reason that none of the code had made it back into the CSRG releases was because some corporate type somewhere in the whale's bloated semicorpse had Forbidden it, as corporate types everywhere seem to find such glee in doing. -- Thor Lancelot Simon tls@panix.COM - What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who - - once mattered the most to us are wrapped up in parentheses. --John Irving -