[TUHS] Old Unix tapes from University of Nottingham

[Dan Plassche via TUHS]

On Thu, 23 Apr 2026, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

> It was a QIC-150, and it included source.  That was one of the reasons
> I bought it.  Quite possibly there were multiple tapes.
> 
> At the time, I think, it was available *only* with source.

Thanks.  You're right.  I dug further and found details from 
early BSDi announcements on usenet that had previously eluded me.

> > Maybe the BSD/386 X11 Nottingham tapes include
> > system sources as well, or not all of world was distributed and
> > building for early users on alpha and beta.
> 
> That depends on the size of your world, of course.  I don't think it's
> worth looking for my tapes; even if I find them, they're unlikely to
> be readable.

Ok, I understand.

The reason for my interest is to see the early differences with 
Net/2 and 386BSD.

It appears that libraries and userland sources apart from X11 
were 200 MB on the earlier releases as with 1.1.
 
Alpha and beta 0.2-0.3 always included source and on qic tapes 
only.

Exabyte and binary only copies were afterwards (exabyte with 0.4
and a binary only version with 1.0).

References:


  Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
  Path: sparky!uunet!uunet!kolstad
  From: kolstad at uunet.uu.net (Rob Kolstad)
  Subject: BSDI Information
  Message-ID: <1992Jan3.214546.15564 at uunet.uu.net>
  ...
  The distribution includes complete source -- source for all binaries
  included.  
  ...
          BSD/386 is running (in alpha test) at several sites.
  ...
  HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS
  ...
         Minimum      At least 4 MB RAM and 40 MB Hard Disk.
                      3.5" Floppy
                      Cartridge Tape (QIC-150) [or network access to one]
  ...
         For Source   At least 200MB Hard Disk (300 MB preferred)


  Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
  Path: sparky!uunet!uunet!kolstad
  From: kolstad at BSDI.COM (Rob Kolstad)
  Subject: Beta status for BSDI's BSD/386
  Message-ID: <1992Mar19.045844.10474 at uunet.uu.net>
  ...
  BSDI completed alpha testing with 32 tapes of Release 0.2 in the field.[!]
  ...
  All source is now under release control (using CVS).
  ...
  BSD/386 Release 0.3 is distributed only on QIC-150 tapes


  Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
  Path: sparky!uunet!uunet!kolstad
  From: kols... at uunet.uu.net (Rob Kolstad)
  Subject: BSDI Q&A for BSD/386
  Message-ID: <1992Jun17.213335.26082 at uunet.uu.net>
  ...
  By early May, 1992, BSDI has shipped over 250 copies of BSD/386 ver-
  sion 0.3.3 to customers around the world. Version 0.4, the pre-
  release version, will be available by July, 1992.
  ...
  You'll need a hard-disk drive, at least 80 MB for the base operating
  system, preferably 100 MB. Future install procedures will enable
  use of smaller disks (if you omit certain functionality, e.g., emacs
  or on-line manual pages). If you wish to use X, add 60 MB (just
  over 40MB for binaries, the rest for swap space). To put the
  binaries and sources on the disk, you'll need at least 350MB.
  

- Dan