[HECnet] SIMH and Alpha

[John H. Reinhardt]

On 6/7/2020 9:32 AM, Keith Halewood wrote:
>
> I realise this isn’t strictly related to hecnet but…
>
> I had a look around the SIMH repo at what looked like the beginnings of the Alpha simulator, particularly the CPU, including the PAL-code emulation for VMS. Relative to  the VAX and PDP-11 simulators for example, it looks like there’s a lot of work remaining however.
>
> Has it stalled due to lack of time, interest, knowledge…. or is there some ‘engineering’ issue with its implementation in SIMH that is presenting a hurdle too high currently to pass?
>
> Keith
>
Probably time, interest and need.  Until recently there has been a fair amount of low(er) cost Alpha kit available and unless you need the V8.x versions of VMS, then you could probably get along with the 7.3 VAX versions for "playing".  Now that VAX VMS apparently has an imminent end date, interest might pick up as there is a dearth of low cost Alpha emulators, especially those that don't run on Windows.

I would suggest that the Simh mailing list <

http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh> might be the better place to ask since most, if not all of the Simh developer crew will be hanging out there.

-- 
John H. Reinhardt