This project provides a web-based user interface for Open SIMH’s IBM 650 simulator. The simulator runs entirely in the browser via WebAssembly, compiled from Open SIMH using Emscripten.
It comes with a variety of card decks ready for you to load. There’s a SOAP and a FORTRANSIT but this is not familiar territory for me. Bitsavers has a collection of PDFs. Oh, IT (Internal Translator) is a Compiler, according to the README deck. By which we might mean an assembler, in modern terms.
I also appreciate the notion of the source of the term “blinkenlights” in the documentation:
The term blinkenlights comes from a tongue-in-cheek warning popular in computer rooms of the mainframe and minicomputer era:
ACHTUNG!
ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENSPEEPERS! DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKEN. IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS. ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.
Edit: here’s an appropriate recreation (by yours truly)
Wish I could show this to my (very) elderly friend Dan, who remembers using the Wolontis interpreter on a 650 in the late 1950s, possibly at Caltech. Sadly, Dan has no computer, no internet and lives in another country, so chances are slim.
“Send the information in the mail, and use the telephone to say hello.” was my thought when reading this.
A Android App for simh computers could be useful product. A apple II on a Apple phone clone.
