[Simh] Announcement: CDC 1700 release 2 and request for documentation

[John Forecast]

I would like to announce release 2 of the CDC 1700 simulator. The major changes include:

	1. Fix protect fault for 2-word instructions so that background task now work correctly
	2. Lay the ground work for supporting the enhanced instruction set of later
	    Cyber-18 series processors
	3. Fix disk layout bug (Disks are not backwards compatible with previous version)
	4. Add debugging support for displaying MSOS 5 system requests
	5. Fix various problems found by Coverity

Fix #1 means that the Macro Assembler and Fortran compiler are now functional.

I’ve also added some utilities to simtools for manipulating .tap files (creating, extracting and
copying) along with a utility for handling COSY archives (COSY is a run-length encoding
scheme used on the CDC 1700 for storing source card decks). Bitsavers has tapes containing
source archives for the Macro Assembler, the Fortran compiler and MSOS 4.

The install tape I’ve been using was created by CDC explicitly for Exxon’s 1784 system. It
includes device drivers for a 1752 drum, a 1743-2 asynchronous communications controller
and a 1728/430 card reader punch. I have documentation for the card reader/punch but if
anyone has documentation for the 1752 or 1743-2 I would appreciate hearing about. In fact I
would be interested in any 1700/Cyber-18 documentation.

I believe that it should be possible to generate a new system from scratch including whatever
peripherals are available in the simulator. In order to do this I would need a copy of the
MSOS 5 customization guide - bitsavers has a preliminary copy of the MSOS 4 version but
that may not be sufficient.