This is excellent Richard, glad to see such a complete B5500 emulation on the SimH platform.
Here are additional notes related to Burroughs emulators and these machines generally; I'm posting here in the hope someone might have something relevant and as a placeholder for the current status of recovery efforts for Burroughs machines. B5500: 1. Sid McHarg has the oldest B5500 emulation we know of implemented in C++ and can be run on Linux/OS X (Sid has shown it running on a Raspberry PI too). Sid was responsible for preserving the set of 7-track MCP distribution tapes that we now all rely on for these B5500 emulators. 2. There was a Python-based emulator under development but we haven't heard from the author for a while so not sure of its current status. Mark Lloyd was well advanced with an emulator written in Pascal/Lazarus on Linux. Having so many different implementations of emulators for the B5500 has helped uncovering some quite subtle bugs along the way. 3. Discussion about the retro-B5500 emulator and the B5500 happens via this Google Group from time to time: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/retro-b5500 4. There is quite a bit of B5500 software remaining to be proofed, corrected and tested - some quite interesting items, for example Gary Kildall's APL for the B5500. Another interesting piece of software is the B6500 simulator that run on the B5500 that Burroughs was using to support the implementation of this follow-on machine. This B6500 simulator package includes MCP 0.0. Note the B6500 simulator needs a specially modified version of ALGOL; it is thought changes can be made to the ALGOL compiler we have without too much effort. B205: 5. Paul Kimpel has done another excellent implementation of a browser-based B205 emulation (datatron.blogspot.com). This could be used as the basis for a SimH implementation if someone was interested. Paul Kimpel and Tom Sawyer have recovered several notable software items from Donald Knuth such as his ALGOL-58 implementation. B6700: 6. We're looking for software for the Burroughs B6700 (and related family members, B7700, B6800). Dan Young from Unisys has helped us locate a partial release of MCP 2.1 for the B6700, and we have a few other pieces from different releases but at this stage no complete release has been found. 7. Peter Grootswagers has done an amazing Java implementation of a complete B6700 system (CPU + peripherals and cross-compilers) but like us is somewhat stymied by the lack of software. 8. A few of us would like to implement a replica of the impressive B6700 blinkenlights front-panel (MDL - Maintenance Diagnostics Logic panel). We've tracked down the only known panel still in existence (located in Denmark) and we have the start of a nice set of pictures of various parts. At this stage an accurate graphical UI version of the MDL could be easily implemented as standalone and later incorporated into an emulation. We have a few seconds of video footage of the MDL in operation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpv6pXlwEjY We're waiting for better close-up detail of the MDL and also trying to track down the original source of the MDL video footage. 9. I maintain a list of lists relating to B5000 and B6000/7000 systems here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JnMsyE8ssJi_-MUsK0rT9LPtNpeJCpTv1QrFw-917Y8/edit?usp=sharing The lists aim to track the locations of installations, software, versions etc. Corrections are very welcome. Illiac IV: 10. A few of us are interested in the early supercomputer known as the Illiac IV; Burroughs was responsible for much of the initial implementation. As only one was ever built, it lacks the multiplier effect to help preserve copies of the software. We've contacted about a dozen people closely involved with this machine, but so far we are not having any success finding any parts of the toolchain for this system (the only new item found in the last couple of years is the CFD manual). NASA Ames (where the Illiac IV ended up) has on-staff historians who are supportive but have not found anything either (I do wonder if the best option is for someone to visit every single office at NASA Ames and ask all the residents if they have any tapes, listings of other ephemera at the back of a drawer or filing cabinet). _______________________________________________ Simh mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
