[Simh] Re: SIMH on portable machines

[A.Bucher at alcatel.de]

Hi,

>> Small (simh)Vax is nice too!  I have a friend (slowly) running simh on a
>> HP/Compaq Handheld iPaq H5500 with Familiar Linux Distro --  about 85%
>> the speed of 11/750.  It is scary to watch VMS boot on something about
>> the size of a remote control for my television.

>I might be interested in that in the future (I might be getting some
>flavor of PocketPC later this year)... what are the I/O options?  I take
>it if one is on a wireless network or docked, one can telnet into SIMH and
>log into the VAX?

>85% of an 11/750 sounds like faster than 11/730 or MicroVAX-I speeds
>(0.3-0.4 VUPs, where an 11/750 is nominally 0.6 VUPs)... fast enough... we
>used to put a dozen users on an 11/730 for office work (MASS-11, VMS'
>MAIL...)  Of course, our expectations were somewhat low, then (c. 1983)

That's one of my next projects, getting a linux distrib running on my
HP2210 (64MB/400Mhz,
so the speed mentioned above might be realistic, because the speed of
simh/VAX on
my 500Mhz/256MB W2K desktop feels like the real 3900 KA655 cpu),
and then I'll try simh as well. What kept me from doing it is the missing
keyboard on
the PDA - a character-terminal-based OS is no fun with a virtual keyboard
...
good for a gag, but not more. not even for doing demonstrations or the
like.

If you really want to do that, try to get a PPC with a integrated keyboard
...
I am not sure of the linux implementation of cradle/wireless/dialup
connections, but if it is
similar to the MS version, it might be possible to telnet the virtual VAX
on the PPC.

btw, 10-20 users were normal for a 11/730, since it was designated as
"workgroup system".
you just should not try to do too many compile jobs simultaneously :-)
on our 11/750's, we had between 20 and 80 users each, depending on the
tasks the users had (office,
remote passtrough to other systems to be debugged, development, etc).

besides: does anybody remember the DOS emulator for the unibus VAXes?
I mean the hardware version, two cards, one for io and bus IF, one for mem
and a genuine 8086 CPU ... !
that much about "emulation" ...

regards,
Andreas