
4.2BSD on SIMH vax with networking - beefhash
http://plover.net/~agarvin/4.2bsd.html
======
alxlaz
SIMH is one of the things that got me into embedded programming. I'm still
very fond of this thing, and it's one of the first things that I install on
any machine that I have.

I am not old enough to have used those machines in real life. I have _seen_
some of them in real life, but only as a child. However, I was interested in
computer history -- and I had been for quite some time (after stumbling upon
ESR's edition of the Jargon file) when I ran into SIMH.

This was back when documentation was pretty scarce, and Internet images slow.
I got SIMH on my home computer by relying on floppy disks and a very
understanding internet cafe operator. Shortly after, I got a dial-up
connection, and managed to lug a few of the historical UNIX images, and boot
them in a PDP-11 machine.

I remember being astonished at how much could be achieved in (what seemed to
me, back in the late 90s/early 00s) so little memory and with so little
computational power. It's what got me interested in the whole "doing less with
more" business. Many years later, it turned out to be useful knowledge; when I
got my first job writing device drivers for a really tiny RTOS, 48 KB of flash
and 4 KB of RAM seemed like a reasonably comfortable space to write code in.

A few years later, I also got a hold of an OpenVMS copy -- which was actually
pretty complicated because it involved signing up for DECUS Munchen (I still
have my membership card!), which was not very easy considering that I was well
under 18 and all the German words I knew were "Danke", "Gutten" and "Tag". I
don't remember if SIMH or another emulator already had pcap-based networking
support back then, but in any case, I ran a small OpenVMS machine and offered
shell accounts to a few curious folks. The whole thing didn't really take off
since the machine doing the hosting was the one I used every day for general
computer stuff so...

I think the other emulator I had tons of fun with back then was GXemul (
[http://gxemul.sourceforge.net/](http://gxemul.sourceforge.net/) ). Warmly
recommended, even today. It's a glimpse into interesting times -- I'm tempted
to say "better times", but nostalgia is a little treacherous.

------
cat199
Spun up 4.3 BSD Unix on SIMH a few years back -

Definitely puts things in chronological perspective to boot up something from
that era (1986) and find it to be just about as functional as the base system
today..

This is in contrast (imho) to v7/32v from only a few years prior which feels
very 'incomplete' as compared to a modern system.

------
erikj
There is also a writeup on how to run OpenVMS on SIMH VAXserver 3900, a more
obscure thing than older Unix installations:
[https://vanalboom.org/node/18](https://vanalboom.org/node/18)

------
unimpressive
Reminds me a bit of my writeup here:

[http://www.jdpressman.com/2015/11/27/how-to-emulate-
unix-v7-...](http://www.jdpressman.com/2015/11/27/how-to-emulate-
unix-v7-using-SIMH-\(2015\).html)

(I figure if you enjoy this tutorial you'll probably enjoy trying that one out
too.)

To OP: The networking is a really nice touch. I didn't even attempt anything
like that so kudos to you.

------
luckydude
Nice writeup.

But if you do this don't you get 4.3?

[http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_4.3_BSD_on_SIMH#Enabling_...](http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_4.3_BSD_on_SIMH#Enabling_remote_users)

------
rst
There are some more obscure systems of interest for which emulators are also
available -- Multics (see [http://multicians.org/sim-
inst.html](http://multicians.org/sim-inst.html)), the Burroughs 5500 and MCP
([http://retro-b5500.blogspot.com/](http://retro-b5500.blogspot.com/)), old
mainframe environments via Hercules, and so forth.

~~~
michrassena
Ok, that's interesting. I'd seen the Multics source was made available a few
years ago. Has anyone tried this?

------
flyinghamster
I've always felt SIMH was pretty cool. I haven't done anything with the VAX
emulators, but a few years back I had a PDP-11 simulation running on a
Raspberry Pi with RSTS/E 7.0.

This was roughly equivalent to the system I used in high school, and I laughed
out loud when I discovered that 7.0 wasn't Y2K-compatible. The math teacher
who taught the computer classes was warning us about two-digit year values
back in 1981!

------
michrassena
Can you actually use the Web on this? A couple of years ago I installed NetBSD
on a Vaxstation 3100, and white it ran fine, and even networked over the AUI
port, I couldn't get Lynx to run. I'd love to have a less-anachronistic BSD on
my VAX.

~~~
tedunangst
You will have to rewind to 5.9, but lynx should work on openbsd. Not sure why
it wouldn't work on netbsd, though.

~~~
michrassena
Thank you. It looks like my 3100/38 is supported. Should be a fun winter
project.

------
2sk21
Really impressive. One question though - back in 1985, when I first logged in
to a real VAX 11/780 running BSD 4.2, it was on a VT220 terminal connected
through a terminal on a DZ11 (I think). Is that also available in the
simulation?

------
feelin_googley
For networking, if necessary, one can use slirp.

"Another alternative to direct pcap and tun/tap networking on all environments
is NAT (SLiRP) networking. NAT networking is limited to only IP network
protocols so DECnet, LAT and Clusting can't work on a NAT connected interface,
but this may be the easiest solution for many folks."

source:
[https://github.com/simh/simh/blob/master/0readme_ethernet.tx...](https://github.com/simh/simh/blob/master/0readme_ethernet.txt)

[https://virtuallyfun.com/category/slirp/](https://virtuallyfun.com/category/slirp/)

