How to install Ersatz-11 emulator?

Ersatz-11 emulator

In this tutorial, we will install the Ersatz-11 emulator. It emulates the PDP-11 computer. The PDP-11 was a series of 16-bit minicomputer produced by Digital Equipment Corporation.

Installing

Linux

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If you have not already installed a Linux distribution, see our tutorials on how to install Kubuntu, a beginner-friendly distro.

First, download the Ersatz-11 archive from its website:

Extract the archive you downloaded. Open a terminal, and move to the extracted folder.

Now install the e11 executable in /usr/local/bin, so that we can call it from anywhere:

sudo install e11 /usr/local/bin/

Now you can start using Ersatz-11 emulator. Run e11 to get started. To exit, type exit and press enter.

Windows

First, download the Ersatz-11 archive from its website:

Double-click on the file to extract it (it is a self extracting archive). Move the extracted folder where you want.

Now add the folder to the PATH environment variable. To do so, open the Start menu and search for the Edit the system environment variables entry, which opens up a System Properties window. In the Advanced tab, click on the button Environment Variables. There you’ll see User and System variables, which you’ll be able to edit.

In the section entitled User Variables, double-click on the entry that says Path. Another window will pop up showing a list of paths. Click the New button and paste the path to your folder. Once that’s inserted, select your newly added path and click the Move Up button until it’s at the top.

That’s it! You may need to reboot your computer for the changes to take effect, but you should now be able to call pdp11 from the command line:

Now you can start using Ersatz-11 emulator. Run e11 to get started. To exit, type exit and press enter.

Ersatz-11 Emulator

Documentation

You will find a PDF file containing the documentation of Ersatz-11 in the extracted folder. You can also download them separately from Ersatz-11 website:

Credits

Video tutorial

Do you want to follow the tutorial by watching a video? We will post a video on our youtube channel soon.

Archives of this tutorial are available on Wayback Machine.


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