3 ms·

For doing what?

Pet_Ant 1y ago
For the same reason one visits a museum. If that doesn't make sense to you, then doing this won't either.
dare944 1y ago
For me, it's a chance to experience what it was like to use and develop software on these systems back in the day. For example, lately I've been writing some small apps and adding new kernel features to a variant of V6 Unix running on my PDP-11/05. It's humbling to see what it really took to be productive on these systems.
- anthk 1y ago
  Some people even did y2k patches to BSD 4.3. Also, tons of 'modern' software could run on it you can get GCC 2.95 and GCC 3.4. Lynx, for instance. Or gopher and IRC clients. And, maybe, with a bit of luck, Lua and JimTCL.
iefbr14 1y ago
For nostalgia sake. It's from the computing period when there was a great influx of good idea's but still a huge shortage in memory and storage.
- amelius 1y ago
  > a huge shortage in memory and storage Maybe this explains why we have to call "creat" to "create" a file.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    Idk about creat specifically but the utility names are all terse because you were interacting with the system on a 110-baud teletype.
Aldipower 1y ago
If you cannot learn from history, you'll have no future too, man.
- justmarc 1y ago
  That's why so many of these new age development tools, libraries and abstractions are such incredibly janky pieces of bloat that literally require what a few decades ago was supercomputers. All downhill from here.
chasil 1y ago
Unfortunately, I am working for an aerospace manufacturer that runs VAX VMS on emulators (which are quite expensive). We also run an even older operating system, OS2200. The original VMS system manager who moved from 7000 series hardware to emulation was somewhat inquisitive, and we did install VMS 7 on simh. He retired and passed away some years ago, and none of his replacements have wanted to touch simh. I find that apathy appalling.
- rjsw 1y ago
  Given who wrote it, simh seems as close to an official VAX emulator as you are going to get.
  - chasil 1y ago
    The Charon/Stromasys sales staff described it as a toy.
    - anthk 1y ago
      In 1990's, maybe. Today simh-classic it's serious stuff up to the point a fork was made because some nut tried to tamper 1:1 disk/tape images with custom headers.

For doing what?

For the same reason one visits a museum. If that doesn't make sense to you, then doing this won't either.

For me, it's a chance to experience what it was like to use and develop software on these systems back in the day. For example, lately I've been writing some small apps and adding new kernel features to a variant of V6 Unix running on my PDP-11/05. It's humbling to see what it really took to be productive on these systems.

anthk 1y ago
Some people even did y2k patches to BSD 4.3. Also, tons of 'modern' software could run on it you can get GCC 2.95 and GCC 3.4. Lynx, for instance. Or gopher and IRC clients. And, maybe, with a bit of luck, Lua and JimTCL.

iefbr14 1y ago

For nostalgia sake. It's from the computing period when there was a great influx of good idea's but still a huge shortage in memory and storage.

amelius 1y ago
> a huge shortage in memory and storage Maybe this explains why we have to call "creat" to "create" a file.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Idk about creat specifically but the utility names are all terse because you were interacting with the system on a 110-baud teletype.

Aldipower 1y ago

If you cannot learn from history, you'll have no future too, man.

justmarc 1y ago
That's why so many of these new age development tools, libraries and abstractions are such incredibly janky pieces of bloat that literally require what a few decades ago was supercomputers. All downhill from here.

chasil 1y ago

Unfortunately, I am working for an aerospace manufacturer that runs VAX VMS on emulators (which are quite expensive). We also run an even older operating system, OS2200. The original VMS system manager who moved from 7000 series hardware to emulation was somewhat inquisitive, and we did install VMS 7 on simh. He retired and passed away some years ago, and none of his replacements have wanted to touch simh. I find that apathy appalling.

rjsw 1y ago
Given who wrote it, simh seems as close to an official VAX emulator as you are going to get.
- chasil 1y ago
  The Charon/Stromasys sales staff described it as a toy.
  - anthk 1y ago
    In 1990's, maybe. Today simh-classic it's serious stuff up to the point a fork was made because some nut tried to tamper 1:1 disk/tape images with custom headers.