Running SIMH on Raspberry Pi without Pi-DP11 Front panel hardware?

[peterbbu]

Hi,

Is there a standard version of simh (pdp11) that will run on the raspberry pi?

I am aware of PiDP11 variant but that seems to be tightly tied into the PiDP 11/70 front panel emulation hardware. However, without the hardware it does not appear to be straight forwards to run emulations on it. I am looking for a simple command line version similar to the MSDOS version running on a PC. I would like to emaulate an 11/23 and an 11/73.

thanks

Peter

 

[GreyHairedDECfan]

I run RT-11, RSTS, and a (not very good) build of RSX-11M on Ubuntu, without a PiDP11. So yes you should be able to run those and other DEC operating systems on a Pi.

 

[daver2]

Just download the standard sources for simh, build it on your PI, and configure your PDP11 emulation environment.

Ok, I haven't identified all of the steps, but is this just what you want to do?

There is a website here for building a VAX executable version of SIMH on the PI. You just build the PDP11 executable instead.

OpenVMS on a Raspberry Pi – Peter Hicks' Blog

Is there something I am missing?

Dave

 

[jplr]

> I run RT-11, RSTS, and a (not very good) build of RSX-11M on Ubuntu

Wow, there are ports of those OSes on Ubuntu?

(edit: I found)

GitHub - hperaza/RSX180: A RSX-11M-like multi-tasking OS for the Z180.

A RSX-11M-like multi-tasking OS for the Z180. Contribute to hperaza/RSX180 development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

GitHub - hperaza/RSX280: RSX-11M-like OS for the Z280 CPU.

RSX-11M-like OS for the Z280 CPU. Contribute to hperaza/RSX280 development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

GitHub - rust11/rust: RUST/SJ and RUST/XM RT-11 compatible PDP-11 operating systems

RUST/SJ and RUST/XM RT-11 compatible PDP-11 operating systems - GitHub - rust11/rust: RUST/SJ and RUST/XM RT-11 compatible PDP-11 operating systems

github.com

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Wow, there are ports of those OSes on Ubuntu?

When you’re running an emulator, yes.

I ran the PDP-11 version on BSD 2.11 using SIMH with network support on the company LAN for a few weeks 20+ years ago just for laughs. (We were a FreeBSD shop so it seemed like the right thing to do.)

Unless you’re specifically interested in running software that really relies on using the front panel switches extensively instead of terminal input the physical panel is pretty useless other than as eye candy. If you really need it, though, you can get a virtual onscreen panel with a little work.

Simulated PDP-11/70 panel on SimH

Joomla! - dynamische Portal-Engine und Content-Management-System

retrocmp.com

 

[GreyHairedDECfan]

When you’re running an emulator, yes.

I ran the PDP-11 version on BSD 2.11 using SIMH with network support on the company LAN for a few weeks 20+ years ago just for laughs. (We were a FreeBSD shop so it seemed like the right thing to do.)

Unless you’re specifically interested in running software that really relies on using the front panel switches extensively instead of terminal input the physical panel is pretty useless other than as eye candy. If you really need it, though, you can get a virtual onscreen panel with a little work.

Simulated PDP-11/70 panel on SimH

Joomla! - dynamische Portal-Engine und Content-Management-System

retrocmp.com

I gave up on using real DEC hardware. I had to admit that I just don't have the wherewithal now to fight 40 year old electronics. By using simh I get the same experience without the headaches of ancient hardware (not to mention the added electricity usage). Hats off though to the folks who are able to keep the old gear running!

 

[reinhardtjh]

I run RT-11, RSTS, and a (not very good) build of RSX-11M on Ubuntu, without a PiDP11. So yes you should be able to run those and other DEC operating systems on a Pi.

There is a better build of RSX-11M available from Johnny Billquist and available here: http://mim.stupi.net/pidp.htm

It says for the PiDP-11 but that's not required, it will work on any suitably configured Simh-11install.

It also includes an installation of Johnny's TCP/IP software for networking.

 

[Don Kosak]

Hi,

Is there a standard version of simh (pdp11) that will run on the raspberry pi?

I am aware of PiDP11 variant but that seems to be tightly tied into the PiDP 11/70 front panel emulation hardware. However, without the hardware it does not appear to be straight forwards to run emulations on it. I am looking for a simple command line version similar to the MSDOS version running on a PC. I would like to emaulate an 11/23 and an 11/73.

thanks

Peter

On your Pi:
1) Grab a copy of SIMH source code
2) Grab the extra networking requirements (for DECnet or TCP/IP)
3) Build SIMN
4) Copy the executable to a directory in your path

I'll go through the steps in detail:

Step 1:
Log into your PI and open a terminal then download the SIMH source

git clone https://github.com/open-simh/simh.git
cd simh

Step 2:
Install the networking libraries as root using sudo apt-get install.

sudo apt-get install libpcap-dev
sudo apt-get install libvdeplug-dev
sudo apt-get install vde2

Step 3:
Build SIMH, this will take a few minutes on a PI. We'll just do the PDP-11

make pdp11

Step 4:
If the build worked, you'll have an executable file called 'pdp11' in the simh/BIN directory.
You can copy that anywhere in your path. I put mine in '/usr/local/bin'

sudo cp BIN/pdp11 /usr/local/bin

Now that SIMH is built for your Pi, you can follow any of the guides for downloading system images and setting up your '.ini' file for your custom PDP-11.

To launch it, open a terminal and type 'pdp11 {name_of_.ini}

 

[vrs42]

Is there a standard version of simh (pdp11) that will run on the raspberry pi?

I believe there's also an older version you can just get using

sudo apt-get install simh

 

[peterbbu]

Many thanks most encouraging.

I have now found that the PiDP build includes 'client' in the bin directory, this appears to be PDP11 version of simh under another name.

Invoking it in a directory with a boot.ini and valid disk image seems to work fine I can define an 11/23plus and boot from it.

Peter