[svlug] BSD floppy downloads by modem

[John Conover]

john_re writes:
> In the days of BSD floppy downloads,
> what was the largest # of floppy images to download,
> on which BSD,
> and what was a typical modem speed at that time?
>

A 3.5" floppy is(/was) 1.44 MB, (it was 5.25"=1.2 MB in the original
IBM PC, which was, also, the size of the media of the original BSD
distribution for the PC-called BSD Lite, 4.1, after the ATT/Berkeley
litigation-including Xenix, the MS interpretation of the BSD 4.1
distribution,) at 9600 Baud modem speed, (the standard for the era for
digital data,) would take about 2 minutes to download a single floppy.

Both BSD and Xenix were about 18 floppies, or so, for the minimal
executable distribution-about 60 floppies, or so, for the complete
distribution, (including UUCP, etc., which was the way stuff was
downloaded, in those days.)

Loading the 60, or so, floppies into a 286/PC would take several
hours, (provided no read errors or CPU snarks-in which case, start all
over again-it was always loading the last floppy that failed.)

The origins of Linux was SysV, Rel 3.2, (circa 1994, although SysV,
Rel 4.X was the current ATT version of the era,) was authored/compiled
by a company called Microport in S. Cal. for the PC, (distributed
under various brand names,) and was about a K buck for the
executables, MSRP, for labeled floppies about 24 of them.

L.T. thought a K buck was an R.O., and wrote Linux, as an alternative,
which was downloadable on a BBS, in mid 1994, (which was based on
Minix out of Holland by A. Tanenbaum, which was, also, a BSD/Lite
work-the-same variant-implemented as a micro kernel-on 3 X 1.2 MB
floppies, distributed as a text book.)

The micro-kernel vs. monolithic-kernel, (i.e., SysV/BSD/CMU Mach/Apple
MAC OS X,) arguments, between Torvalds and Tanenbaum, archived on the
Net, (antagonize Google,) are relevant to this day.

    John

BTW, I don't know what prompted the question, but the original VAX,
(Virtual Address eXtension, i.e., VM, virtual memory,) in a multi-user
DEC PDP 8, circa the mid 70's, had an executable kernel size of under
64 K, (as in Kilo,) Byte-and would fit, easily, on a single
floppy. And, it was not a bit stream paradigm OS. Its all the
bloat/junk we hang on the OS that occupies a CD worth of
data/download-about 15-30 folks full time just keeping the
"applications" up to date on a Linux distribution, minimum.

-- 

John Conover, conover at rahul.net, http://www.johncon.com/