How to install ! PDP7 Unix on SIMH?

We can run ! PDP7 Unix on the SIMH PDP-7 emulator. First, we need to download the ! PDP7 Unix kit.

Downloads

You can download the kit needed to run ! PDP7 Unix on the SIMH PDP-7 emulator from our GitHub repo fork of the original project to resurrect Unix on the PDP-7 from a scan of the original assembly code:

• ! PDP7 Unix kit

If you want to build the kit yourself, refer to our guide on how to do so.

Using ! PDP7 Unix

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 two files. Create a folder somewhere to store the files for this VM and move those two files named boot.rim and image.fs 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:

set cpu 8k
set cpu eae
set cpu history=100
show cpu
set tti unix
set rb ena
att rb image.fs
set g2in ena
att -U g2in 12345
set lpt disa
set drm disa
set dt disa
show dev
load boot.rim 010000
go

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

pdp7

After the emulator starts, login using the ID ken and password ken. You will see the following screen:

tip

There are other user accounts on the image like dmr (password: dmr). Do you know who dmr and ken were? Check the first comment to find out, or search it on the web!

Type ls followed by enter. It will list all the files available on the disk.

That's it! We used ! PDP7 Unix. We can create a shell script to make it easy to launch the VM.

Linux

Create a file called pdp7unix.sh with the following content:

#!/bin/bash
pdp7

Now make the file executable:

chmod +x pdp7unix.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 ! PDP7 Unix page to learn how to use it.

Windows

Create a file called pdp7unix.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 ! PDP7 Unix page to learn how to use it.

Credits

• The disk image and other files used above are from a kit built from the project to resurrect Unix on the PDP-7 from a scan of the original assembly code.

Video tutorial

Do you want to follow the tutorial by watching a video? We will post a video on our YouTube channel soon.

Archives of this tutorial are available on Wayback Machine.