Any word on 2.11BSD pl500?

[Warren Toomey]

Hi, is there any word yet as to when the 2.11BSD pl500 distribution tape will be available? I can't wait for it to drop :-)

Cheers, Warren

[Johnny Billquist]

No stated time yet.

Johnny

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|| on a psychedelic trip
email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

[Thalia Archibald]

I have some fixes for the assembler that I've been meaning to send.
Do you have something specific in mind for pl500?

Thalia

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[Johnny Billquist]

It will come out this year, as it's an anniversary. But apart from that,
we're just trying to collect things, and also get some things set up in
order.

Johnny

[Warren Toomey]

Re: what I would like. These are just my personal wishes:

 + A full installation tape for pl500;
 + Either all the non-generated files in some form of modern
   version control system (git etc.), or
 + A set of checksums for all the non-generated files after
   each future patchset.

It's been so hard to ensure that patches are applied properly,
especially when some of the actions have to be done by hand.

Thanks so much to all who have been doing the 2.11BSD patches.
I know it's been a labour of love.

Cheers, Warren

[terri-...@glaver.org]

On Friday, June 5, 2026 at 4:48:13 PM UTC-4 warren...@gmail.com wrote:

Re: what I would like. These are just my personal wishes:

 + A full installation tape for pl500;

I would  expect there to be both a full installation tape as well as one or more

disk images for emulators where all you'd need to do is your local custom-

zations.

 + Either all the non-generated files in some form of modern
   version control system (git etc.), or

Steve hasn't (AFAIK) been doing that up to now and  my guess is that he

won't in the future, either. Plus, the only self-hosted version control sys-

tem available in stock 2BSD is sccs.

 + A set of checksums for all the non-generated files after
   each future patchset.

Similarly, I don't see any checksum / MD5 / SHA1 implementations in the

base system, and most of those are likely too computationally intensive. 

| It's been so hard to ensure that patches are applied properly,
| especially when some of the actions have to be done by hand.

This boils down to "trust where you got your base kit" and is one of the

reasons 500 will be a full tape + bootable disk image release. There are

a number of disk images floating around where some steps have been

missed in the past.

IIRC, the last "official" distribution tape was 431, so it's definitely time for

a newer base kit.

I contributed the (very minor) /PATCH-LOG functionality that shows when

a given patch was applied (hopefully completely). At a minimum it will tell

you when a given image has had a particular patch applied, and you can

check to see if a file that was supposed to have been modified or replaced

(for example, /etc/disktab in 482) was actually modified or replaced.

It isn't perfect, but it's a step...

[Warner Losh]

On Fri, Jun 5, 2026 at 2:48 PM Warren Toomey <warren...@gmail.com> wrote:

Re: what I would like. These are just my personal wishes:

 + A full installation tape for pl500;
 + Either all the non-generated files in some form of modern
   version control system (git etc.), or

I should finish my 2.11BSD pl0 project. I finished the trip back in time. The second half of which was to start at 0 and do a full git history from there, including a few 'catch up' patches that were needed so that the 'way points' among the way made sense. Maybe I should do it in time to be done with 2.11bsd pl500. Since I did the project, I came up with a clever way to do it, I think. I'll have to see if I can implement it quickly.

I get that there's no git on the platform. I'm doing it to study the system better. But it will also create close to a canonical set of files maybe....

Warner

[Johnny Billquist]

Hi.

On 2026-06-05 22:48, Warren Toomey wrote:
> Re: what I would like. These are just my personal wishes:
>
>  + A full installation tape for pl500;

That will happen. I already have the process setup for doing this, and
made the tape with #499 applied available.

>  + Either all the non-generated files in some form of modern
>    version control system (git etc.), or
>  + A set of checksums for all the non-generated files after
>    each future patchset.

Uh? You mean like all the source files of the whole system?
Neither of those will happen, I'd say.

> It's been so hard to ensure that patches are applied properly,
> especially when some of the actions have to be done by hand.

Which is why an "official" distribution with the latest patches already
applied will be helpful, I think/hope.
Made available both as an installation tape, and also in the form of a
bootable disk image.

> Thanks so much to all who have been doing the 2.11BSD patches.
> I know it's been a labour of love.

We might also just be crazy. :-)

Johnny

>
> Cheers, Warren
>
> On Saturday, 6 June 2026 at 03:40:27 UTC+10 Thalia Archibald wrote:
>
> I have some fixes for the assembler that I've been meaning to send.
> Do you have something specific in mind for pl500?
>
> Thalia
>
> On Friday, June 5th, 2026 at 00:46, Johnny Billquist
> <b...@softjar.se> wrote:
>
> > No stated time yet.
> >
> > Johnny
> >
> > On 2026-06-05 03:02, Warren Toomey wrote:
> > > Hi, is there any word yet as to when the 2.11BSD pl500
> distribution tape
> > > will be available? I can't wait for it to drop :-)
> > >
> > > Cheers, Warren
> > >
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> > email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books
> > pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
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