[TUHS] Re: 4.3 BSD version in the Unix Archive

[msokolov@ivan.Harhan.ORG (Michael Sokolov)]

Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:

> The 4.3BSD-Quasijarus dists were compressed with a compression format
> that's not compatible with either gzip nor old compress(1). Michael
> Sokolov should be able to send in some notes on the tools required.

Yes, for political reasons I needed to make the 4.3BSD-Quasijarus compressor a
version of compress, not gzip (can't have any GNU), but I wanted to have the
higher compression ratio of deflation, so I created a new version of compress
that supports deflation in addition to the original LZW algorith.  You can find
the new compress in components/compress.tar either on my FTP site or in Warren's
archive in the 4BSD area.

> > Is there a set of 4.3BSD-Tahoe Vax distribution files that's complete?
>
> Not that I know of.

"4.3BSD-Tahoe Vax distribution" is an oxymoron.  Berkeley released the Tahoe
tape with Tahoe binaries, no VAX binaries.  I was the one who compiled the Tahoe
source for the VAX, and the result was 4.3BSD-Quasijarus0.

OTOH, you may be referring to the fact that the Tahoe distribution in the
archive is broken.  Yes, it is.  Unfortunately there was an unrecoverable tape
read error.

> > Finally, do you know of any 4.3BSD version that will install and run on
> > simh? Quasijarus and Tahoe of the Unix Archive are broken for me and Reno
> > doesn't boot stand. Admittedly, I haven't tried the vanilla version yet.
>
> Not that I know of. I'll cc this to the TUHS list and see if any other
> people know the answer.

This has come up time and again.  SIMH's emulation of VAX is too poor.  VAX is
not an easy architecture to emulate.

MS