386 UNIX:

The second article in the "PORTING UNIX TO THE 386" series discussed the utilities we had to build to test the port on an actual 80386 PC.
By far, the most popular article.

This, the first article, is the first published mention of 386BSD. By this time, the project had been operational for 18 months, and William Jolitz was at Berkeley working on the Net/2 release.
In this installment, we discussed the beginning of our project and the initial framework that guided our efforts, in particular, the development of the 386BSD specification.

We resolve conflicts between UNIX worlds by choosing a middle way - one that isn't a pure standard, but one that doesn't fight standards commonality.

Sometimes you're forced to use processor features - like hardware context switching. Origionally, the earliest versions of 386BSD didn't use the hardware context switch TSS feature - but you still had to have one anyways.

This article, last of the original three done altogether in 1990, on getting the critical pieces functioning independantly that we needed to do the port. Once these we obtained, the kernel was inevitable.

We describe the need and use of a cross-support environment to create 386 code from a non-386 machine, so as to create the initial binarys before our port can generate them.

Our methodology was to prove that we could get a usable, tested executable across onto the native machine to be useful there. As we found and fixed, this methodology sped getting enough good and working native components, such that we could begin native development.

We describe the origin and orientation of the "Free Software" vs. "Open Software" efforts via respective licenses.

We build the first instance of the root filesystem - before any operational system is present on the 386 to build one. Part of the bootstrapping cycle of getting up the first running system on a new architecture.

Understanding the boundary between research and development with BSD, and where a balance between commercial efforts can be struck.