[Info-vax] Is SIMH on a Mac a viable option ?

[John Wallace]

On Sep 2, 9:06 am, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam... at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> Have been pondering migration options/process.
>
> But in the end, I may still need access to VAX/VMS to run All-in-1 or
> access some RMS file I forgot to convert etc etc.
>
> How viable is SIMH on a 64 bit Intel Mac running OS-X ? Is this a large
> project to setup and get working reliably ?
>
> Does the SIMH instance get access to a virtualised ethernet device
> (which could, for instancem pop DECterms onto a remote workstation).
>
> This wouldn't be more for ensuring access to legacy data from time to
> time as opposed to running it continually.
>
> Where do I go to get SimH and is there sufficient documentation for it
> to make it easy to setup ?

There is a SIMH FAQ, although the obvious link to the html-format FAQ
on the SIMH website - starting from http://simh.trailing-edge.com/help.html
- currently 404s for me.

There is however a PDF FAQ (dated 2005) at http://simh.trailing-edge.com/pdf/simh_faq.pdf

It doesn't answer your exact questions but for example if you know
what libpcap is and if you know whether your Mac has a libpcap, you
can make an educated guess for the answer to your "does it do
Ethernet?" question.

FAQ 1.6 is "How is SIMH distributed?". Answer: "SIMH is distributed in
source form from the SIMH web site, in the form of a Zip archive.
<snip>"

I've not used SIMH myself yet but based on my observations of those
who have used it, sorting the PAKs seems like one of the trickier
steps, the rest mostly don't look too daunting.