SIMH on low overhead platform

[Ed Groenenberg]

August 17, 2020 7:50 PM, "Chuck Guzis via cctalk" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> On 8/17/20 12:43 AM, Tom Hunter via cctalk wrote:
> 
>> Has SIMH been ported to a low overhead (instant-on) platform?
>> 
>> I ask the question because the startup time of Linux is distracting when
>> powering on a PiDP-11/70 or similar clone systems based on SIMH.
> 
> There are some very small versions of Linux that load quickly,
> particularly if you don't need GUI support. For example, BusyBox is a
> "stripped to the bones" Linux that finds its way into many (if not most)
> 'net appliances, such as modems and routers.
> 
> I don't know if SIMH will run on it, but there are many other "smal
> Linuces.
> 
> FWIW,
> Chuck

Until about a year ago, I had a home made device which was an interface between a modified version SIMH and
a real 11/70 console.
SIMH did run on a mini-itx PC with a 1GHz via processor running ttylinux.
Ttylinux did consist of a V2 or V3 linux kernel, busybox for the commandset and dropbear for ssh.
To get the bash prompt (no login was required) it only took 15 seconds to boot from a flash memory card.

Unfortunately, the maintainer of ttylinux has stopped the development for the buildenvironment,  but I
have the version 14 and 16. It has support for the Beaglebone, but not for the Rpi. Still it might not be
too difficult to create the config files and other build stuff to make it work. 

If anyone want to give it a shot, let me know and I'll place it on my website for download (about 24Mb).

Ed
--
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