Talk:SIMH

SIMH flavors

I think it is time to distinguish between the three flavors of SIMH, although they have a lot in common, but the differences grow steadily.

My proposal is a generic SIMH page which might have the following section after the introduction:

== SIMH Flavors ==

For some time passed there are three flavors of SIMH now:

* [[Classic" SIMH]] ([http://simh.trailing-edge.com/ http://simh.trailing-edge.com/])
* [["New" SIMH]] ([https://github.com/simh/simh https://github.com/simh/simh]) 
* [["OpenSIMH"]] ([https://opensimh.org/ https://opensimh.org/]) 
It is relatively hard for a beginner to decide which way to go. I will not give any specific advice, but some short descriptions:

'''"Classic" SIMH''' is the oldest one, whereof the others were forked later on. It is Bob Supnik work mostly, except for some HP simulators. Development apparently stopped (or at least slowed down) in December 2022. The current version is SIMH V3.12-3.

'''"New" SIMH''' was the first bigger fork and added a lot more simulated computer systems.

'''"OpenSIMH"''' forked from "New" SIMH because of insurmountable different opinions of both maintainers and contributors.

The generic SIMH page should concentrate on the commonalities; the differences should be explained in the three specific pages linked in the gereric page.

What do my fellow writers think? Vaxorcist (talk) 18:12, 2 April 2023 (CEST)

Sounds good to me. Jnc (talk) 19:14, 2 April 2023 (CEST)

New content

Don't do a 'cut and paste' to move the content from SIMH/Draft to here; let me know, and I can merge the two pages. Jnc (talk) 18:02, 3 April 2023 (CEST)

O.k., I will Vaxorcist (talk) 18:23, 3 April 2023 (CEST)

Renaming / Revising SIMH pages

I think it is time (or rather, long overdue) to rename the following pages:

• SIMH to "Classic" SIMH
• SIMH/Draft to SIMH

and revise both pages. What do you think? Vaxorcist (talk)

Is the term "'Classic' SIMH" really in use to refer to the old one? Does that version get enough use to make it worth having a separate article for it (as opposed to just covering it in the same article as the current one)? Mind, I don't have a strong preference either way; I am just trying to work out what makes the most sense.

I took a look at SIMH/Draft, and the article here, and there is a lot of content in this article that isn't in the Draft one, so we'd need to do something a little more complicated than just do some moves. But let's work out the previous point first. (If we wind up editing the good ideas/content from Draft in to this one, or something, don't worry; I can merge the two histories into one once the editing process is complete.) Jnc (talk) 21:25, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

There are three variants of SIMH - whether that is desirable or not. And in my opinion, they differ sufficiently from one another to keep them separate.

The term "Classic SIMH" has become established to refer to the original SIMH written by Bob Supnik. There's still development on this variant, although somewhat sluggish.

The "New SIMH" is my own wording - the most important difference to the Classic SIMH is the introduction of asynchronous I/O, an improved clock and several other useful additions. Sometimes you can see that this version is called the "V4 SIMH", but I think that's not a good idea as some time sooner or later it might become V5. I was even tempted to call it "Closed SIMH", but I do not want to provoke anyone, even if I do not like what he's doing.

"OpenSIMH" is an official name given by the founders of the newest SIMH version.

All in all I think it needs clearly distinguishable names to avoid more confuision as there already is. Imagine a beginner stumbling into this chaos of three similar, but still very different in detail, versions!

If I had one wish in "bit heaven", I would pray for the reunification of "New SIMH" and "OpenSIMH."

There are probably good reasons to keep the "Classic SIMH" and a modernized SIMH apart, but noone needs a third one. What a waste of precious time, ideas and resources! Life is too short for such (some rude words here).

And you're right, all the SIMH related pages need to be more or less revised or created:

• SIMH/Draft, which shall become the "common" SIMH page
• SIMH, which shall become the "Classic SIMH" (it is already, but needs an update)
• New SIMH, which is probably the hardest to write about (at least for me)
• OpenSIMH, which carries the spirit and recommandation of Bob Supnik

Vaxorcist (talk)

After thinking about it for a while, I basically agree with you; the way to handle this is to move the current SIMH page (and history) to Classic SIMH (since, as you indicate, that name has been "established to refer to the original SIMH"); SIMH needs to be a new page, basically a disambiguation page, but including a short history of SIMH. After looking at SIMH/Draft, I guess that will do for this, but it has more detailed content than I would have put there (e.g. the info on file formats); but I guess if those are the same for all the versions, it makes sense to put them there.

OpenSIMH you will have to create; it might start as a stub with just links to the online area/work. For 'New SIMH', I would recommend asking the New SIMH community what they think its formal name should be. Then, you will have to write it! Jnc (talk) 18:07, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

I started with moving SIMH to SimH Classic (which is used on their own web page), but the automatically generated redirect is in the way now for moving SIMH/Draft to SIMH. So this time I do really need your help, don't I? Next steps will be to revise existing/add the missing page(s). Vaxorcist (talk) 07:41, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Redirects and moves are a complex subject; when I go to do a move, I am given the choice of not "Leav[ing] a redirect behind", but I don't know if only admins get that option (they might). Similarly, I am given the choice to not "Move [the] associated talk page" (of a normal article page), but again, I don't know if ordinary users get that (especially, in the latest version of MediaWiki).

Also, I thought that ordinary users are allowed to move an ordinary article page on top of a redirect; you can see in Special:RecentChanges that when I put this Talk:SIMH page back where it was to start with (it seemed to me the best place for it, at a central location in the group; there's a redirect from Talk:SimH Classic to it), MediaWiki automagically deleted the redirect at the destination. Again, maybe the latest version of MediaWiki doesn't allow that for ordinary users.

Anyway, you should be all set now! Jnc (talk) 12:11, 8 September 2026 (UTC)