Why was SIMH written?
Significant portions of the computing past are being irretrievably lost, as old systems are scrapped, documentation and software is thrown out, media become obsolete or unreadable, and inventors and pioneers die. SIMH was written as a vehicle to allow the computing past to be made accessible to a wider audience, for recreational and educational purposes. SIMH preserves historic computers as portable software, that can be run on any modern system. SIMH also preserves representative software packages for these systems. With SIMH, anyone with a desktop computer can call up and run significant samples from the computing past, at any time. 1.3 What is the history of SIMH? The SIMH project started in 1993, at the suggestion of Larry Stewart of DEC. Its immediate purpose was to preserve the fading hardware and software record of early minicomputers. Since then, the project has been expanded to include other important systems, spanning the history of computing from the late 50’s to the late 80
