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wfjm.w11/doc/INSTALL_simh.md
wfjm 279a5e0fd2 cleanup setup spelling [skip ci]
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Installation of the SimH pdp11 simulator

The w11 project uses the pdp11 simulator from the SimH project. The project was started by Bob Supnik under simh.trailing-edge.com. This site contains the "classic" version of SimH, the 3.X stream, with v3.11-1 as the last release. Since about 2014 the project is continued by a team led by Mark Pizzolato as GitHub project simh/simh. The new, functionally much enhanced, version is called V4.*. However, the team decided not to provide releases anymore, just a stream of commits, more than 4200 as of April 2022.

Debian and Ubuntu offer simh packages, but with the obsolete version V3.8.1, released in February 2009. The main obstacle to the inclusion of newer versions is, according to the Debian maintainer, the unclear license situation.

The only practical way to obtain the pdp11 simulator is by installation from sources. The GitHub repository contains also the classical versions, nicely marked with tags.

The scmd scripts provided in the w11 project were originally developed for SimH 3.8, and worked for SimH 3.9 and later releases. The SimH 4.* development over time became incompatible with the scmd scripts used for w11 verification. See issue #30 for details.

The bottom line at the moment:

  • install SimH from simh/simh
  • checkout v3.11-1

SimH license changes

The maintainer of the simh/simh GitHub project, Mark Pizzolato, decided on May 15th, 2022 with commit ce2adce6 to change the license of the repository. The bottom line of the change is, that some files are declared proprietary and this repository is no longer a FOSS project, see also issue #1163. This triggered massive reactions, see issue #1161 and discussions on the SimH mailing list simh@groups.io, starting with post New license?. See especially Bob Supnik's post SimH licensing and the state of the project.

Given that situation using version v3.11-1 as described above is the only prudent option for the time being.

Open-SimH relaunch

The post Announcing the Open SIMH project announed on 2022-06-03 a re-launch of SimH as FOSS project. A new repository open-simh/simh has been set up and provides the SimH code-base under an MIT-style licence, see LICENSE.txt.

The community will certainly move to open-simh, so best solution is currently