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The DEC PDP-11 Emulation Webpage

Last Updated: 20AUG2007

Latest News!

  (01AUG2007) Ersatz-11 V5.1 released, adds disk/tape caching
  (12JUL2007) SIMH V3.7-2 released
  (03FEB2007) SIMH V3.7-0 released.
  (26MAY2006) SIMH V3.6-0 released, has several PDP-11 updates.
  (01FEB2006) Ersatz-11 V5.0 released, adds Win32 version and CPU emulation sped up
  (22JAN2006) Links on this webpage updated.
  (20JAN2006) SIMH V3.5-2 released.
  (15OCT2005) SIMH V3.5-1 released.
  (04SEP2005) Ersatz-11 V4.1 released.
  (03MAY2005) SIMH V3.4-0 released.
  (31OCT2003) All links on the site have been updated to reflect the new location of Al Kossow's Documentation archive which has been moved to http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf.
  (30OCT2003) Due to a recent disk loss, Al Kossow's documentation archive has moved to http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf. I haven't had time to update the links on this site that link to his site.
  (12SEP2003) SIMH V3.0-2 Released
  (22JUN2003) SIMH V3.0 Released
  (03MAR2003) SIMH V2.10-4 released.
  (24OCT2002) SIMH DELQA Ethernet emulator for VAX and PDP-11 Beta 5 Released
  (02JUL2002) Ersatz-11 V3.1 Released, the demo version now includes ethernet support, and is now available in both the DOS/Windows, and Linux versions.
  (30JUN2002) I've become aware of SOL-11, a small standalone version of Forth for the PDP-11
  (21MAR2002) Various Updates
  (19MAR2002) Added several other emulators to the list
  (19MAR2002) The TECO Pocket Guide is now available online in HTML format, thanks to the efforst of Brian Inglis.
  (04MAR2002) SIMH V2.9-2 Released
  (24JAN2002) Info on the new Liberal license for ancient UNIX sources

Contacting Me

If you have any comments about this site I can be reached at healyzh AT aracnet DOT com. If you know of any software or documentation that isn't listed below I'd appreciate knowing about it so that I can provide links when appropriate.

Introduction

Something that many people fail to realize is that the PDP-11 is still alive and well, as such anyone running PDP-11 software under emulation needs to have a valid license for running that software. The following license was arranged by Bob Supnik several years ago for SIMH.

LICENSE AGREEMENT

This Agreement, dated ________________, is entered into by Mentec Inc., a Massachusetts Company, located at 55 Technology Drive, Lowell, MA 01851, U.S.A. (MENTEC), and _____________________________________________ having a residence at __________________________________________________________ (CUSTOMER).

Whereas, MENTEC owns the rights to the following PDP-11 Operating Systems and associated layered products (RT-11 V5.3 or prior, RSTS/E V9.6 or prior, RSX-11M V4.3 or prior, RSX-11M PLUS V3.0 or prior) (SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY) and is prepared to grant a non-exclusive license to use such SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY for personal, non-commercial purposes;

Whereas, CUSTOMER desires to enter into a License Agreement which will allow CUSTOMER to use such software technology at his or her residence for personal, non-commercial purposes;

MENTEC and CUSTOMER agree as follows:

1 DEFINITIONS

SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY shall mean the binary versions of the PDP-11 Operating Systems (RT-11 V5.3 or prior, RSTS/E V9.6 or prior, RSX-11M V4.3 or prior, RSX-11M PLUS V3.0 or prior), and associated utilities and layered products that run on PDP-11 computers.

MENTEC'S INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS shall mean MENTEC's patent, copyright and trade secret rights in its SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY.

EMULATOR shall mean software owned by Digital Equipment Corporation that emulates the operation of a PDP-11 processor and allows PDP-11 programs and operating systems to run on non-PDP-11 systems.

2 LICENSE GRANT

MENTEC grants to CUSTOMER a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license under MENTEC's INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS to use and copy the SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY solely for personal, non-commercial uses in conjunction with the EMULATOR.

3 TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AND ACCEPTANCE

3.1 CUSTOMER is responsible for obtaining copies of SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY and accepts the SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY "AS IS".

3.2 MENTEC is under no obligation to supply SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY, documentation, error corrections or updates to the SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY if or when they become available, or to provide training, support or consulting for the SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY.

4 WARRANTY DISCLAIMER/LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

MENTEC DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO ANY SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY
LICENSED TO CUSTOMER HEREUNDER, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL MENTEC BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE OR DATA, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY INFRINGEMENT OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF ANY SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY LICENSED HEREUNDER.

5 INDEMNITY

CUSTOMER will hold MENTEC harmless against all liabilities, demands, damages, expenses, or losses arising out of use by CUSTOMER of SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY or information furnished under this Agreement.

6 TERM AND TERMINATION

6.1 This Agreement shall be effective until otherwise terminated. Either party may terminate this Agreement at any time upon 30 days written notice.

6.2 If CUSTOMER shall fail to perform or observe any of the terms and conditions to be performed or observed by it under this Agreement, MENTEC may in its sole discretion thereafter elect to terminate this Agreement, and this Agreement and all the obligations owed and rights granted herein to CUSTOMER shall immediately terminate.

6.3 The parties agree that the termination of this Agreement shall not release either party from any other liability which shall have accrued to the other party at the time such termination becomes effective, nor affect in any manner the survival of any right, duty or obligation of either party.
6.4 In the event of any termination of this Agreement for any reason, CUSTOMER shall delete all original and all whole or partial copies and derivatives of the SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY from his or her computer system. CUSTOMER further shall cease to use and distribute the SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY in all forms immediately upon the date of termination.

7 GENERAL TERMS

7.1 This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

7.2 This Agreement imposes personal obligations on CUSTOMER. CUSTOMER shall not assign any rights under this Agreement not specifically transferable by its terms without the written consent of MENTEC.

7.3 The SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY obtained under this Agreement may be subject to US and other government export control regulations. CUSTOMER assures that it will comply with these regulations whenever it exports or re-exports a controlled product or technical data obtained from MENTEC or any product produced directly from the SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY.
7.4 The waiver of a breach hereunder may be effected only by a writing signed by the waiving party and shall not constitute a waiver of any other breach.

7.5 CUSTOMER acknowledges that he has read this Agreement, understands it and agrees to be bound by its terms and further agrees that it is the complete and exclusive statement of the Agreement between the parties which supersedes all communications and understanding between the parties relating to the subject matter of this Agreement.

Table of Contents

1. Obtain an emulator
2. Obtain Installation Documentation
3. Obtain Software
4. Obtain Further Documentation
5. Adding Additional Software
6. Mailing Lists
7. Other
8. Related PDP-11 Links

Step 1. Obtain an emulator:

- Bob Supnik's simh
  - Good multiplatform support
  - Current Release Version 3.7-2 (last updated July 12th, 2007)
  - Includes DELQA Ethernet emulator for VAX and PDP-11
- The Xhomer Project
  - Emulates a DEC Professional 350
  - Based on SIMH
  - Links to P/OS 3.2 and Venix 2.0
- Harti Brandt's Begemot or P11
  - Emulates a PDP-11/73 with DEQNA ethernet support
  - Supports 2.11BSD, RT-11 and RSX-11M/M+ (ethernet has only been tested under 2.11BSD), it does not work with RSTS/E.
  - Current Version 2.10c (last updated in August 2002)
  - Versions of 2.4 and 2.5 are still available online as part of the PUPS/TUHS archives
- John Wilson's E11
  - Commercial product with Demo version available
  - Win32, MS-DOS and Linux versions available
  - Current Release Version 5.1
  - As of V3.1 the Demo version includes DEQNA support, previous versions have had DELUA (Unibus) support.
- Timothy Stark's ts10
  - Primarily for Linux
  - DELQA and BDV11 supported
  - Supports at least RT-11
  - Disk format compatible with SIMH
  - Latest Stable Version
- Charon-11 (SRI)(Mentec)
  - Commercial Product
  - They used to have a demo version
- Will Kranz's RTEMU
  - For MS-DOS
  - Emulates a PDP-11/23 (KDF11-AX) Running RT11SJ
- Emulator by Eric Edwards
  - For Unix
  - Emulates 11/35
- Emulator by der Mouse
  - For Unix
  - Emulates J-11 without FP instructions
- asd AT holo DOT simbirsk DOT su's Emulator
  - For MS-DOS
- An old Emulator
- Bill Haygood's LSI-11 simulator (Dead Link)
- 11SIM, a PDP-11 simulator that ran on the PDP-6
- Antti Karttunen's ODE11 (Dead Link)
  - Octal Debugger and Emulator for analyzing and running the PDP11 machine language programs.

Step 2. Obtain Installation Documentation:

For Installation documenation you will need to find a Doc Set for the OS of your choice. If UNIX is the OS of your choice, I'm not sure where you'll have to go for docuemenation, though the PUPS page does have some info.

Step 3. Obtain Software:

- Mentec continues to offer many of the PDP-11 OS's as commercial products. They currently sell the following versions of the Operating Systems.
  - RSX-11M-Plus V4.6
  - Micro/RSX V4.6
  - RSX-11M V4.8
  - RSX-11S V4.8
  - VAX-11 RSX V2.5A
  - RT-11 V5.7
  - RSTS/E V10.1A
- If you are covered by the Mentec License shown above, the following is available for download from Bob Supnik's site.
  - RT-11 V4
  - RT-11 V5.3
  - RSTS/E V7.0-07
- SCO has provided a license for the following versions of UNIX, which are available for download from Bob Supnik's site.
  - UNIX V5
  - UNIX V6
  - UNIX V7
- SCO offered an Ancient UNIX License which covers the three versions listed above, as well as numerous others. For information on this see the PDP Unix Preservation Society Home Page. PUPS provides a link to the following document from Caldera.
- 2.11BSD is available from PUPS and TUHS, and the patches through #444 from February 2003 are rumored to be available from here.
- CAPS-11, Cassette Monitor System
- COS, Commercial Operating System
- CTS-300, Commercial single or multiuser Operating System
- DOS/BATCH-11 V10 (no, this isn't related to MS-DOS), available for download from Bob Supnik's site.
- ELF
- TRIPOS
- SOL-11
  - A small non-standard, stand-alone FORTH kernel, basically it's an Operating System and Language all in one.
  - Written by Nils M Holm and freely available

Step 4. Obtain Further Documentation

For the PDP-11 your best bet for finding documentation is going to be to buy it. While finding a Doc Set for the OS of your choice will most likely be a timeconsuming and difficult experience (unless you already have it), it is fairly easy to find books on Macro-11 programming.

- Applications Documentation
  - Standard TECO, Text Editor and COrrector for the VAX-11, PDP-11, PDP-10, and PDP-8, User's Guide and Language Reference Manual, May 1985 Edition (PDF)(TEXT) local copy
  - TECO Pocket Guide (HTML) local copy
- Operating System Documentation
  - DOS/BATCH Manuals Al Kossow's site
- Hardware Documentation
  - Al Kossow has an excellent selecton of manuals here

Step 5. Adding Additional Software

- PDP-11 Freeware Archives (FTP) (HTML)
- The Update Computer Club FTP archives (FTP)
- Alan R. Baldwin's TCP/IP Package for RT-11 & TSX-Plus (this site is running on a PDP-11/73 running RT-11 V5.7 and TSX-Plus V6.5)
- Web-Accesible version of Pete Siemsen's TECO collection.
- Maxwell Froedge's Site of RT-11 Games

Mailing Lists

Other

Related PDP-11 Links

  The PDP-11 FAQ
  Project Delta (RSTS/E)
  PDP Unix Preservation Society Home Page (aka PUPS)
  The Unix Heritage Society Home Page (aka TUHS)
  2.11BSD Patch Archive (Dead Link)
  Hamster's PDP-11 pages (highly recommended)
  CHD's PDP-11 page has some excellent notes on XXDP V2.5
  BDV11 & KDF11 boot controller support for SIMH V2.6B and V2.7

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