Hardware vs Simh

I think you need to consider what you are interested in doing. simulator. If what you want to do is run the old OSes and other software, it will be fie. But the reason I don;'t use it, (or any other simulator for that matter) is that I am primarily a hardware hacker. I want to be able to conenct my logic analyser to the output of the ALU,, That is something you can't do with a simualtr running on a PC. In fact it's soemthing you can't do with a microprocesosr-based machien either. And for that reason, my love is the older Unibus PDP11s, IIRC, the CPU in all Qbus machiens is a custom chipset (F11, J11, etc). On the machines I like, the CPU is half a dozen boards paccked full of simple logic ICs. I think my 11/45 (which AFAIK can't run BSD 2.11) has over 1000 ICs in the CPU. Lovely :-) Another good reason to rtn the real hardware is to use peripherals that don't exist for PCs. Mass storage, termianlas, etc do. But I don;'t think SimH can simualter ADCs nad DACs conencted to real-world devices. And of course, you might waht to read the real PDP11 disk packs, tapes, etc. That's harder to do on a PC. I find the real hardare _much_ easier to maintain than a PC, but then again I am a hardawre type who wants to follow a scheamtic and change 1 transistor (or whatever), not swap a board. I ampretty sure htat SimH running on a moder-insh system will eb a lot faster than any real PDP11, though. Ulitmately it's up to you. Running the real hardare is fun, at least for me. But it will not be as anjoyable for some people, I think -tony