How to install ! DECSys-7 on SIMH?

We can run ! DECSys-7 on the SIMH PDP-7 emulator. First, we need to download the ! DECSys-7 kit.

Downloads

You can download the kit needed to run ! DECSys-7 on the SIMH PDP-7 emulator from the "SIMH Legacy" website:

• ! DECSys-7 kit

Using ! DECSys-7

tip

If you have not already installed SIMH PDP-7 emulator, see the VirtualHub Setup tutorial on how to do so on Linux and Windows.

Extract the kit you downloaded. Inside you will find several files. Create a folder somewhere to store the files for this VM, and move the file named decsys.dtp and decsys.rim into it.

Now we will create a config file for our VM. Create a text file called pdp7.ini with the following content in the VM folder:

att dt2 decsys.dtp
att dt3 scratch.dtp
load decsys.rim 17640
run

Now open a terminal and move to the VM folder. Run the following command to start the emulator:

pdp7

After the emulator starts, type CONTEN followed by !. All commands in ! DECSys-7 execute when you type !. You will see the following screen:

Type S,L,W followed by !. It will list all the files available on the disk.

That's it! We used ! DECSys-7. We can create a shell script to make it easy to launch the VM.

Linux

Create a file called DECSys-7.sh with the following content:

#!/bin/bash
pdp7

Now make the file executable:

chmod +x DECSys-7.sh

Now you can start the VM using the shell script. For example, on KDE you can right-click the file and choose Run in Konsole or on GNOME, where you can right-click the file and choose Run as executable. The VM will start.

See the manuals section on the main ! DECSys-7 page to learn how to use it.

Windows

Create a file called DECSys-7.bat with the following content:

pdp7

Now you can start the VM by double-clicking the shell script. See the manuals section on the main ! DECSys-7 page to learn how to use it.

Credits

• The disk image and other files used above are from a kit available on SimH "Classic" website.

Video tutorial

Do you want to follow the tutorial by watching a video? Here it is:

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Archives of this tutorial are available on Wayback Machine.