[Simh] Questions regarding future simulator development

[Christian Gauger-Cosgrove]

Hello,

I have a few quick questions about what could be added to SIMH. Not
that I could add the features, my skills at C are not quite excellent,
so in general, I wouldn't really be able to add anything to the
project... or it would be better to say, I wouldn't be able to add
anything remotely competently.

Any way on to the questions! How difficult, and better to ask, how
possible would it be to add the following to SIMH at some point in the
future?

1. Some way of interacting with devices while the simulator is still
running. What I mean would be some way of breaking to the "sim>"
prompt without halting the simulated CPU. So one could do things like
swap disk packs, floppy diskettes and magnetic tapes without halting
the system. Kind of like the way the Hercules emulator let's you
affect the system on the fly.

2. Additional MASSBUS controllers and disks. What I mean is, since the
actual PDP-11/70 could have four RH70 MASSBUS controllers installed in
it, would it be possible to have another set of RP disks and TU tape
drives added to SIMH? Also, would it be possible to have the RS03 and
RS04 fixed head disks added to the RP device list? I ask only of the
RS03 and RS04 because while they are not strictly necessary any more
(being they were small logically, but rather quick, swap disks), it
would be nice to have to be able to (re)create more "authentic"
systems.

3. Would it be at all possible for SIMH to become capable of
supporting a multiprocessor system? E.g. the PDP-15's UNICHANNEL-15
option, or the PDP-11/74.


Thank you to any who answer this e-mail. I'd try my own hand at making
some of the modifications to the SIMH codebase, but as I said, my
skills at present are far too low to be of any real use.


Cheers,
Christian