Yes, I went through the exact same thing... I couldn't find anything under MS-Windoze which would get the CD directly.

It helps to have a dual-bootable machine with MS-Windows and Linux/NetBSD/FreeBSD/whatever

I rebooted my machine under Linux and just do the "dd" command dd if=/dev/cdrom of=vms.img (which you probably already know about).

(I'm assuming here that everybody has all of the correct & legal software licenses)

I don't think there is any way for SIMH on Windows to read the CD directly, you need the intermediate image file first.

Yes, I went through the exact same thing... I couldn't find anything under MS-Windoze which would get the CD directly. It helps to have a dual-bootable machine with MS-Windows and Linux/NetBSD/FreeBSD/whatever I rebooted my machine under Linux and just do the "dd" command dd if=/dev/cdrom of=vms.img (which you probably already know about). Then I copied the resulting file to a FAT-mounted drive and after that, I rebooted the machine under MS-Windows and the file was readable under SIMH on Windows. That file can the be burned onto a regular CD-R, shipped off to your friend (I'm assuming here that everybody has all of the correct & legal software licenses), and your friend can use the CD-R from Windows...they don't need to dual boot. I don't think there is any way for SIMH on Windows to read the CD directly, you need the intermediate image file first. Thomas Dzubin