---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bob Armstrong <bob at jfcl.com>
Date: Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 9:41 AM
Subject: [Simh] Resurrecting the ARPAnet IMP
To: simh at
trailing-edge.com
This summer a group of us worked together to resurrect the original
ARPAnet IMP software, and I?m now happy to say that the IMP lives
again in simulation. It?s possible to run the original IMP software
on a modified version of the H316 simh and to set up a virtual network
of simulated IMPs talking to each other. IMP to IMP connections,
which would have originally been carried over leased telephone lines,
are tunneled over IP. As far as we can tell, everything works pretty
much as it did in the early 1970s. IMPs are able to exchange routing
information, console to console communications, network statistics,
and they would carry host traffic if there were hosts on the network.
The hooks are in there to allow simh to support the IMP side of the
1822 host interface, and the next step would be to recover the OS for
an ARPAnet era host and then extend the corresponding simulator to
talk to the IMP simulation.
If you?d like to know more, you can read a detailed account of the
whole adventure here ?
http://walden-family.com/bbn/imp-code.pdf
Everyone involved has agreed to release their work under the same
terms as Bob Supnik?s original simh license, and I?m looking for
suggestions as to how to handle that. We could just ZIP everything up
and host it on the website along with all the other BBN and ARPAnet
documentation. If the community considers the simh extensions for the
BBN hardware to be of general interest then it could be submitted to
the current simh repository. Or it could go somewhere else - I am
open to suggestions.
Thanks,
Bob Armstrong
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I would be very interested in getting a copy of this software. I could
then link it in to some of my gear.
--
Cory Smelosky