After I saw this message, I set up simh and put up simh with unix v6 using the provided
pdp11 binary. I didn't notice a significant difference between running v6 on the pi
from running it on a modern machine with real disk and ram. Everything seemed to work as
expected.
I set up a vms configuration to test it out, and, disk acces from the sd wasn't so
happy. Just transferring my disk images to the pi took forever at ~1.0MB/sec. This was
with a class 10 card, so although its fast, alot of people say they are also buggy. I
haven't had issues with reliability. If you do ANYTHING else on the pi during xfer,
it slows even further. If you do any package management during transfers, the transfer
will stall entirely. With the current operating systems, I think multi-function purposes
of the pi are not very viable. The biggest limitation I believe is the SD card. This
may get better with a disk hanging off of USB. I do not think there is a way to BOOT
from usb and exclude sd entirely at this point. I may try to put swap on a USB disk,
since I believe the SD is the primary hangup.
1) I used the debian OS provided by the pi foundation, as it was the most complete and
reliable
2) simh is already in the armel package archives, and can be installed to the pi with
"apt-get install simh"
If you dedicate your pi to simh, it probably won't cause you unhappiness.
Kevin
From: sampsa at
mac.com
Subject: [HECnet] Raspberry Pi + SIMH VAX?
Date: Wed, 2 May 2012 13:34:00 +0300
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
I'm toying with moving GORVAX onto a Raspberry Pi and SIMH? Anyone played with this
yet? What's the performance like?
Sampsa