The second release of the HP 3000 Series III simulator is now available from the Computer History Simulation Project (SIMH) site: https://github.com/simh/simh This release adds a simulation of the HP 2607, 2613, 2617, and 2618 line printers and supports the use of custom VFU tape images, as well as the built-in HP-standard VFU tape. The full set of configurable options is detailed in a new section of the HP 3000 Simulator User's Guide that is provided in Microsoft Word format in the "doc" subdirectory of the code base snapshot downloaded from the github site. A PDF version of the updated manual is also available at: http://alum.mit.edu/www/jdbryan/hp3000_doc.pdf In addition, the preconfigured MPE-V/R disc image available from Bitsavers: http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/HP/HP_3000/ ...has been updated to add the following features: - The MPE cold load command files attach the line printer to the "lp.txt" output file and specify the "-n" option to clear the file before use. - Preinstalled User-Defined Commands (UDCs) provide access to the COBOL 74 compiler with the MPE-V/E :COBOLII, :COBOLIIPREP, and :COBOLIIGO commands, and to the COBOL 85 compiler with :COBOLIIX, :COBOLIIXPREP, and :COBOLIIXGO. However, note that the simulator currently does not provide the HP 32234A COBOL II firmware instructions, so programs generated by the COBOLII compiler will abort at run time with "ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION" errors, limiting the current utility of the compilers to syntax checking. Thanks once again go to Frank McConnell for providing the HP line printer subsystems manuals that facilitated development of the new simulation, and to Robert Mills for providing the COBOLII UDCs. -- Dave