Abstract
We describe a interactive PDP-11 simulator that runs on the Apple Macintosh. The simulator has been extremely easy for students at the University of Arkansas to learn and operate after a fraction of one lecture period of explanation. It has been utilized for three years in two undergraduate courses: computer organization and assemblers, translators & compilers. Compared to using an actual PDP-11 or a simulator (not the author's) running on our University's mainframe, we have found that the students using the Macintosh simulator achieve higher productivity, measured not by the number of lines assembled or executed in a second but by the number of human hours spent writing and debugging a program. Students gain a clearer understanding of concepts that are intrinsically dynamic (such as the birth and death of activation records) due to the ease with which (simulated) memory and registers can be monitored during execution.
- [1] Hamacher, Vranesic & Zaky, Computer Organization, McGraw-Hill, 1984. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- [2] Knapps & Stafford, Assembly Language for the PDP-11, Prindle, Weber & Schmidt, 1981. Google Scholar
Digital Library
Index Terms
PDP-11 simulator for Apple Macintosh is designed for instructional use






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