IMP system software

[Seth Morabito]

On Oct 1, 2009, at 11:48 AM, Brad Parker wrote:

> Seth Morabito wrote:
>> I think I asked about this several years ago, but I thought I might  
>> try my luck again.
>>
>> Is anyone aware of any surviving ARPAnet IMP System Software, in  
>> any form?
>
> After talking with a person from BBN it might be possible to read
> some old 7-track tapes with some code on them.  Apparently the
> earliest versions were written in PDP-1 assembler with macros.
> Later a cross compiler was written for TENEX.

That is some potentially very good news! Thanks for asking about this!

> I'll dog it for a while and see what happens.  I suppose the next
> question is, "does anyone have docs on the Honeywell 516"?  and
> is there a simulator?

There is not (yet) a 516 simulator, but Bob Supnik's SIMH does have an  
H316 simulator. See: http://simh.trailing-edge.com/h316.html

Later IMPs were H316s, so possibly some of the code on those 7-tracks  
is written for them?

I have no idea how much work would be involved in adding a 516 mode to  
SIMH, nor how hard it would be to simulate the bit-serial IMP-host  
interface hardware, but I'd certainly be game to help with that.

-Seth