Don’t forget SIMH is emulating a lot more than just the CPU, it also has to emulate all the rest of the hardware that makes up a VAX.
My Raspberry Pi 2 clocks in at about 1.6 VUPS, my ESXI host is a i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz (which is starved for RAM), SIMH/VAX on a VM running on it clocks in at about 34.6 VUPS. I have a i5-3470 @ 3.2Ghz and SIMH runs at about 31.6 VUPS. If you have a top of the line, current i7, you might be able to get close to the speed of your VAXstation 4000/96. I’ve been buying used HP SFF desktop boxes to use as servers, I pick them up used for almost nothing. A few months ago, that i5 cost me $75, I think the i7 was less than $200. Wiped the drive, put Linux on it, and now the SIMH/VAX instance on it provides most of the storage for my VMS Cluster. Right now most of my VMS environment at home has been replaced by emulation. Once I move PDXVAX off of a VAXstation 4000/60 (it’s my DECnet area router), I’ll be running a fully emulated environment. Honestly it’s something of a relief. Though I am considering looking into running one physical machine as a desktop, booting it into my cluster. Instead of starting SIMH like this: $ ./vax < vax.ini Try: $ ./vax vax.ini All my VMS systems are using Telnet right now, as I don’t have any VMS system running a modern version of SSH. I’ve also not managed to get DECwindows to work right with any X-Windows on my current systems (it works fine with my SGI O2). This is one of the reasons I’m considering running a physical VMS system as a desktop. You bring up a very good point on the licensing though. I’m not sure what to suggest there. :-( Zane > On Jul 30, 2018, at 3:57 PM, Jeremy Begg <jer...@vsm.com.au> wrote: > > Hi, > > A while ago the power supply in my VAXstation 4000/96 died and rather than > fix it I decided to move it to a Raspberry Pi 3. > > The VAXstation has a 100MHz CPU and the RPi has a 1.2GHz CPU - about 120 > times faster. Yet the performance of SIMH basically sucks, especially when > logging in to the emulated VAX via SSH. > > On the real VAXstation, establishing an SSH sesison was slow -- it would > take the better part of a minute -- but once established it was very usable > and quite capable of running a DECterm to an X11 display on a remote PC over > an SSH tunnel. > > On the Raspberry Pi the SSH session establishment takes several minutes and > trying to run a DECterm is painful to say the least. I was hoping that the > RPi's much faster CPU would compensate for the emulation overhead, > particularly on a very CPU-intensive task like SSH session establishment, so > this result is rather disappointing. > > I could perhaps put up with those issues but there two other, more > fundamental problems when starting the simulation. > > The first one is, the emulation can't be started automatically; I have > to run it interactively in a terminal window. If I try to automate the > startup using, for example > > $ ./vax < vax.ini > > the VAX console boot ROM fails a self test and refuses to boot into VMS. > If I type the commands from vax.ini by hand, it works fine. > > A similar issue occurs if I try to load the boot console NVR from a file: > the VAX console boot ROM fails its self-test and won't boot VMS. > > The second problem is that the simulated VAX is *always* a VAXserver 3900. > Trying to SET CPU MODEL=MicroVAX just doesn't work, so my VAX-VMS licence > PAK's availability table code don't suit the machine any more. > > The SIMH version is currently > > MicroVAX 3900 simulator V4.0-0 Beta git commit id: 733ac0d9 > > I tried downloading the latest from Github (git commit id: 8077d4de) but it > didn't fix the startup issues so I haven't persisted with it. > > Before starting this exercise I had read several reports of people > successfullly using Raspberry Pi to run an emulated VAX so I have to think > something is very broken in my RPi environment, but I'm not sure what I > should be looking for. > > FWIW the Raspberry Pi is running > > Linux pieric 4.14.52-v7+ #1123 SMP Wed Jun 27 17:35:49 BST 2018 armv7l > GNU/Linux > > and the file /etc/os-release is: > > PRETTY_NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)" > NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux" > VERSION_ID="9" > VERSION="9 (stretch)" > ID=raspbian > ID_LIKE=debian > HOME_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/"; > SUPPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianForums"; > BUG_REPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianBugs"; > > SIMH was built with "gcc (Raspbian 6.3.0-18+rpi1+deb9u1) 6.3.0 20170516". > Here is the full SHOW VERSION output: > > sim> show version > MicroVAX 3900 simulator V4.0-0 Beta > Simulator Framework Capabilities: > 64b data > 64b addresses > Threaded Ethernet Packet transports:PCAP:TAP:NAT:UDP > Idle/Throttling support is available > Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) support > RAW disk and CD/DVD ROM support > Asynchronous I/O support (Lock free asynchronous event queue) > Asynchronous Clock support > FrontPanel API Version 5 > Host Platform: > Compiler: GCC 6.3.0 20170516 > Simulator Compiled as C arch: ARM (Release Build) on Nov 9 2017 at > 08:04:00 > Memory Access: Little Endian > Memory Pointer Size: 32 bits > Large File (>2GB) support > SDL Video support: No Video Support > RegEx support for EXPECT commands > OS clock resolution: 1ms > Time taken by msleep(1): 1ms > OS: Linux pieric 4.14.52-v7+ #1123 SMP Wed Jun 27 17:35:49 BST 2018 > armv7l GNU/Linux > git commit id: 733ac0d9 > > The later version (which I'm not running because it didn't fix the startup > issues) is: > > sim> show version > MicroVAX 3900 simulator V4.0-0 Current > Simulator Framework Capabilities: > 64b data > 64b addresses > Threaded Ethernet Packet transports:PCAP:TAP:NAT:UDP > Idle/Throttling support is available > Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) support > RAW disk and CD/DVD ROM support > Asynchronous I/O support (Lock free asynchronous event queue) > Asynchronous Clock support > FrontPanel API Version 12 > Host Platform: > Compiler: GCC 6.3.0 20170516 > Simulator Compiled as C arch: ARM (Release Build) on Jun 17 2018 at > 21:12:47 > Memory Access: Little Endian > Memory Pointer Size: 32 bits > Large File (>2GB) support > SDL Video support: No Video Support > RegEx support for EXPECT commands > OS clock resolution: 1ms > Time taken by msleep(1): 1ms > OS: Linux pieric 4.14.52-v7+ #1123 SMP Wed Jun 27 17:35:49 BST 2018 > armv7l GNU/Linux > git commit id: 8077d4de > git commit time: 2018-06-17T08:37:08+02:00 > > > Thanks, > > Jeremy Begg > > +---------------------------------------------------------+ > | VSM Software Services Pty. Ltd. | > | http://www.vsm.com.au/ | > |---------------------------------------------------------| > | P.O.Box 402, Walkerville, | E-Mail: jer...@vsm.com.au | > | South Australia 5081 | Phone: +61 8 8221 5188 | > |---------------------------| Mobile: 0414 422 947 | > | A.C.N. 068 409 156 | FAX: +61 8 8221 7199 | > +---------------------------------------------------------+ > _______________________________________________ > Simh mailing list > Simh@trailing-edge.com > http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh _______________________________________________ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
