- Download the appropriate version of Bob Supnik's SIMH
- Build SIMH on Mac OS X
- Start up the Terminal program (unless you prefer something else) and cd to the directory you put simh in.
-
You'll need a C compiler. I used the one that is part of the Apple Mac OS X developer tools, which is based on GNU C.
- I had to edit the makefile to change the line:
CC = gcc -O0 -lm -I .
to
CC = cc -O0 -lm -I .
to account for my C compiler.
- Make the VAX simulator
% make BIN/vax
(As long as it actually finishes) Don't worry about any compilation errors at this point unless you know enough to fix them, in which case let Bob Supnik know.
- Creating a configuration file
Once you have a working simh vax simulator you can type in all of the commands needed to get it going at the sim< prompt
but it is much easier to put them all in a single file.
Mine looks like this:
LOAD -r KA655.BIN
LOAD -n NVR.BIN
SET CPU 64M
SET DZ LINES=8
ATTACH -a DZ 12000
SET RQ0 RD54
SET RQ1 RD54
SET RQ2 RRD40
ATTACH RQ0 VAXSYS.dsk
ATTACH RQ1 APP.DSK
B CPU
It's basically a collection of LOAD, SET, and ATTACH commands
- Load the ROM that is included with simh (if it's not in the same direcotry, put in the path to it) :
LOAD -r KA655.BIN
- Load the NVRAM if you have it(this is not included and I don't actually have one. )
LOAD -n NVR.BIN
- Set the amount of memory if you want more than 16MB:
SET CPU 64M
- Creating disk images to install from/to
There are at least two possible methods:
- Letting simh create the disk images
If you designate a file name for a disk image/container simh will create the file for you if it doesn't exist. Note:The one time I tried this while initially configuring simh the file was created but there was something odd about it.
- Using another tool
picoVAX/CHARON-VAX comes with a program to create
disk images. simh is able to takes these and initialize them for its own use. Seems to work.
- Installing VMS
Apparently it is possible in some versions of simh for the emulator to directly read an ODS-2 CD. I could not get this to work on Mac OS X and had to resort to creating a disk image using dd using an example posted to comp.os.vms by someone who had successfully used this technique under Linux.
% dd if =/dev/disk1s0 of=/Volumes/A_partition/vaxvms072.img
Using the correct device name is important. Using /dev/disk1 on my iBook resulted in a flawed disk image that could not be booted from.
Why didn't I just use a bootable image created with picoVAX or CHARON-VAX. Yes, I did think of this but it didn't work. The system that booted from a picoVAX image froze after it asked for data and time information.
- Getting software onto simh
- Using CD's/cd disk images
- Using kermit
- Using tape image files
- Cut-n-paste from TextEdit into EDT or EVE
- Setting up a print queue
