4.3BSD-Reno (1990)

BSD grew up on DEC minicomputers, first the PDP-11 and later the VAX. These machines were smaller and cheaper than mainframes, but "mini" didn't necessarily mean they could fit on your desk.

4.xBSD was a common sight at universities, and several vendors sold commercial systems based on it. Its family tree is still alive today: the Darwin core beneath macOS combines Mach with a healthy helping of BSD.

This installation runs on an emulated DEC VAX-11/780 with 32 MB of RAM.

4.3BSD-Reno landed in June 1990. According to this archived Usenet article, it ran on a surprisingly varied collection of hardware:

VAX (86x0, 78x, 750, 730; MicroVAX II, 3200/3500/3600; 82x0)
Tahoe (CCI Power 6/32, 6/32SX; Unisys 7000/xx; Harris HCX7, HCX9)
HP 9000/300 series

Ready-made binaries, however, were available only for VAX and Tahoe systems.

Want to give it a try? Launch Telnet and connect like this:

% telnet telnet.final-hop.net 40023

Already logged in to another machine in the exhibition? Use:

% telnet reno.exhib.unix

4.3BSD-Reno can take a little while to log you in. Don't worry if a few seconds pass before the login prompt appears.

Terminal session showing the 4.3BSD-Reno shell immediately after login — 4.3BSD-Reno immediately after login.

Once you are logged in, read After login to configure your terminal for the most reliable experience.