PDP-11 mockups?

While I agree with everything that you have written, I still STRONGLY suggest that SIMH have an optional set of terminal interfaces which are able to emulate the most popular terminals which DEC supported for the PDP-11. While I agree that supporting all of the video terminals from the VT52 series to the VT510 series would not be reasonable, at least supporting the VT100 would provide 95% of the functions needed to run SIMH with a PDP-11, in particular for RT-11 when SL: is used or in general for RSTS/E when ARROW keys are used. I also agree that the reason that Bob removed the VT100 Application Keypad functions was likely for the reasons you suggest. So while having a VT100 permanently connected to every PDP-11 running under SIMH is not the solution that Bob Subnik adopted, having that as an option would seem to have been helpful for those users who need a VT100 display interface. On the other hand, while Ersatz-11 does allow major flexibility on the keyboard side, on the display side of the fence, it is a VT100 by default all of the time. If someone wanted an LA36 on the console, then it is possible to change some of the display parameters. But since the output is still to a video display, then VT100 type of character handling seems the most appropriate in any case. In short, if you are using any standard PC these days, a hard copy display is just not available in any case as an option as far as I am aware. However, with Ersatz-11 it would be possible to have a serial port with a cable attached to an LA36 on the console in which case the operator could tell the operating system that an LA36 was being used. In this case, I agree with the default selection for SIMH, I just disagree that there is no VT100 support as an option.