Welcome to PUPS/TUHS 4BSD collection! If you have a VAX you want to install one of these systems on, you will need to first choose which system do you want and then install it. Being the new maintainer of 4.3BSD-*, I authoritatively recommend always using my latest release (currently 4.3BSD-Quasijarus0a). Being practical, if you have a MicroVAX, plain 4.3 is not an option for you, since real MicroVAX support didn't exist until Tahoe. Steven M. Schultz has a recipe for installing plain 4.3 on a MicroVAX (you can find it in tips/SMS_plain43_recipe), but all he does is add in some post-Tahoe pieces. If you have some post-Tahoe pieces in your system, you may just as well get a system that has ALL post-Tahoe improvements included. My Quasijarus releases are exactly such systems, and that's one reason why I recommend using them. You other option is Reno, if you are willing to live with its ugly POSIXization and factor of 2 binary and source bloat. Note, though, that I do not support Reno, and as Quasijarus releases support more and more VAX hardware, Reno will stay frozen where it is. Quasijarus0 already supports everything Reno supports plus a little more. For more information about 4.3BSD-Quasijarus releases, including hardware support, please see: http://minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au/Quasijarus/ All 4BSD releases to date officially support only a specific set of disks. 4.3BSD-Tahoe introduced disk labels to allow the use of arbitrary disks, but unfortunately their current implementation still makes it impossible to install the system directly from the distribution tape onto a fresh disk that is unknown to UNIX and has never had UNIX on it. However, if you have a second disk and a copy of DEC Ultrix, you can install 4.3BSD-Quasijarus or a VAX build of CSRG's Tahoe or Reno release indirectly following my instructions in tips/QTR_disklabel_note. Future 4.3BSD-Quasijarus releases will allow direct installation on fresh and unknown disks. Have fun! Michael Sokolov New 4.3BSD-* Maintainer PUPS/TUHS 4BSD Coordinator