SIMH on low overhead platform

[Chris Hanson]

On Aug 17, 2020, at 12:43 AM, Tom Hunter via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> 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.

NetBSD runs SIMH just fine and can be made to boot extremely quickly.

I use NetBSD on a surplus HP ProLiant DL360p Gen8, NetBSD 9.0-stable boots in just a few seconds. The hardware itself takes a couple minutes to go through its bootstrap process, however. (I should have considered setting up ESXi and installing NetBSD atop that to avoid the hardware boot process, since I'm regularly rebuilding and updating NetBSD…)

  -- Chris