[Simh] Potentially stupid questions: PDP-11/RSTS and PDP-10/TOPS-20

[Michael Kerpan]

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 6:59 AM, Michael Richter <ttmrichter at gmail.com> wrote:
> Question #1: I'm trying to find some programs to put into my RSTS system and
> stumbled over some files on BitSaver that I can't figure out.
>  (http://bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp11/dectape/ would be an example.)  They
> end in .dta and seem to be viable tape images of some kind when I inspect
> the contents.  For
> example http://bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp11/dectape/rsts/SeattlePacificCollege/158_ahl_basic_games.dta.gz
> has a whole bunch of BASIC source files which appear to be in perfect order.
>  Yet I cannot find any combination of SIMH attach and RSTS mount commands
> that will allow me to actually access the contents of these.  What, if
> anything, is the trick to accessing these mysterious "DTA" formatted images?
>  Is there any kind of tool to convert to a format that SIMH supports?
> Question #2: I want to start tinkering with TOPS-20 under SIMH, but I can't
> find a sysgen tape image that boots.  Every one I've tried so far after
> attaching and using SIMH's boot command has just led to SIMH sucking up all
> my CPU and doing nothing else, even if left alone for hours.  Does anybody
> know of a known-good tape image to sysgen a TOPS-20 installation from that
> works under SIMH?

I can't help with the PDP-11 BASIC games, but as for TOPS-20, you have
to use version 4.1 or earlier. I've done it and it works fine. IIRC.
Just get your tapes here: http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/

If you really want to have the best possible TOPS-20 experience,
though, I really recommend using KLH-10, which allows the us of the
newest available version of TOPS-20 (including the excellent Panda
distribution) instead.