How to install ! OS/8 on SIMH?

We can run ! OS/8 on the SIMH PDP-8 emulator. First, we need to download the ! OS/8 kit.

Downloads

You can download the kit needed to run ! OS/8 on the SIMH PDP-8 emulator from the "SIMH Legacy" website:

• ! OS/8 kit

If you are on Windows, you may need to install additional software such as 7-Zip to extract the kit.

Using ! OS/8

tip

If you have not already installed SIMH PDP-8 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 folders. Open the folder named Disks. Inside, you will find two files. Create a folder somewhere to store the files for this VM, and move the file named os8_rx.dsk into it.

Now we will create a config file for our VM. Create a text file called pdp8.ini with the following content in the VM folder:

attach rx0 os8_rx.dsk
boot rx0

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

pdp8

After the emulator starts, you can enter DIR to see a list of files available:

That's it! We used ! OS/8. We can create a shell script to make it easy to launch the VM.

Linux

Create a file called OS8.sh with the following content:

#!/bin/bash
pdp8

Now make the file executable:

chmod +x OS8.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 ! OS/8 page to learn how to use it.

Windows

Create a file called OS8.bat with the following content:

pdp8

Now you can start the VM by double-clicking the shell script. See the manuals section on the main ! OS/8 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? We will post a video on our YouTube channel soon.

Archives of this tutorial may be available on Wayback Machine.