[GreenKeys] the rareness of the KSR 35 vs ASR 35

[Christian Gauger-Cosgrove]

I'll field an answer to this question!



On 13 December 2013 12:51, Cory Heisterkamp <coryheisterkamp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Which begs the question, could something similar be done today as sort of an
> interactive historical recreation? Either using a local PC as the 'time
> share' machine, or setting up a web-accessible server where scratch files
> could be created and TTY's could "dial" into? Wouldn't that be a kick.
> -Cory
>
There are two questions which you need to ask before you can start
with such a project:

1. What computer and what operating system would I like to emulate?
2. What is the host platform?

If your answer to the first question is any of the machines in the
SIMH suite (most popular being the PDP-11, PDP-8, HP21xx, and DG
NOVA), then rejoice, for in the newest 4.0 branch it is possible to
hook the virtual serial devices to real serial ports. To get them
working with a teletype, you'd need only have to configure the serial
port correctly, and put a current loop converter between the two
sides.

If you want to run an IBM mainframe system, you develop a much more
difficult problem, of needing to convert the raw TTY traffic into
telnet. Though, you can emulate any System/370 and upwards machine;
but as I'm unsure of whether MTS has been resurrected it may not be
all that useful to you unless you feel comfortable
configuring/reconfiguring/sysgen'ing the operating systems that I know
for certain are available (OS/360 21.8F, MSV 3.8J, and VM370
version-I-cannot-remember).

There are other simulators available that emulate other systems, I
don't know much/anything about them though (there is dtcyber like Mr.
Elmquist mentioned in his e-mail). There is also a professional PDP-11
simulator out there known as E11, it is quite costly for a commerical
version (necessary for larger disks, like what would be used on a
timesharing system) but it has a lot of functionality that SIMH
doesn't implement/probably won't implement (example: it works with
UNIBUS and QBUS interface hardware, so you can control real
peripherals). If you plan on simulating a PDP-10 SIMh only supports
the KS10, if you need support for the KL10 (e.g. for later versions of
TOPS-20), you have to use the klh10 emulator, which as far as I can
tell only works on POSIX systems.


The second question determines the ease with which you can interface
to the teletype. SIMH in the 4.0 version works fine on Windows and
POSIX environments (BSD, Linux, Solaris, or actual UNIX); however some
of the stuff that might be doable on POSIX systems without too much
work (like automatically answering modem pools) are difficult -- at
best -- on Windows.



If you want some help setting up a SIMH instance and some of the DEC
operating systems (I mostly dink around with RSTS/E as a hobby) I'd be
more than happy to help you set it up.



Also, for maximal comedy, you can also setup most Linux and BSD
distributions such that they will accept logins from serial ports. So
if you wanted you could always connect a Model 33 or Model 35 to your
modern Linux or BSD box and actually use the system itself via the 33
or 35. (There might be some oddness though.)


Cheers,
Christian


-- 
Christian M. Gauger-Cosgrove
STCKON08DS0
Contact information available upon request.