Utilities and programs related to 'simh' and PDP11 emulation
SIMH: http://simh.trailing-edge.com/ ( also https://github.com/simh/ )
The 'simh' minicomputer emulator allows you run ancient software on a simulated ancient platform. However, it can be very difficult to move files between the host computer and the simulated on. Additionally, there are often difficulties in doing simple operations like editing, searching, and so forth.
Given the power of modern computers, it makes sense to be able to easily move things back and forth so that you can do all of the 'convenient' things on the host system, then transfer files back and forth between host and emulated minicomputer.
That's where this repository comes in, making some of these operations easier, with scripts and host utilities, as well as native programs that run on the emulated minicomputer.
This specifically translates to/from the RT11 magnetic tape format. For more information, see the 'README' file for that directory.
This is a simple simh startup script that shows how to boot up a PDP11 system using an RT11 5.3 image. These images are available online for personal use at various places, including these:
ftp://minnie.tuhs.org/pub/PDP-11/Sims/Supnik_2.3/software/rtv53swre.tar.gz
(make sure you read the license file - I'm supposed to mention that)
These are sample simh script files that you can run from the simh console to attach a file as the 'paper tape reader' (ptr) or the 'paper tape punch'. These scripts make it convenient to transfer text or single files to and from the PDP11 environment, by using a disk file on the host as input or output to/from the paper tape reader+punch device.
This is a sample simh script that attaches a printer to a host disk file. It will basically let you access the line printer from the PDP11 environment by writing output to the disk file. Keep in mind that the simh program doesn't immediately flush the buffer, so to get the output you will need to detach the file from the simh console.
Additional information (such as PDP11 documentation) can be found at:
http://simh.trailing-edge.com/pdf/all_docs.htmlhttp://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp11/rt11/v5.6_Aug91/