Xerox Alto - Salto Simulator

[geophoto3]

This may be old news - but just in case anyone is interested - the "Salto" emulator can boot and run a number of disk images from the original Xerox Alto. The code is available on bitsavers. The software must be compiled - I've done so with Ubuntu 10.10. The source code is here:
http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/Xerox/Alt ... lto-0.4.2/:
There are a number of disk images here:
http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/Xerox/Alt ... lto/disks/

I've been able to play a few games and mess around with Bravo. My real interest is in Smalltalk 76. The disk image is there, but it either does not work or I don't know how to start it. Any hints?

[yksoft1]

Build that under Windows with MinGW gcc 4.4.0 ..






download: http://www.mediafire.com/file/mqwmc4t14 ... ltowin.rar

[Al Kossow]

If the image hasn't been corrupted, you use the 'bootfrom' command

bootfrom xmsmallboot.image

I don't recall it working correctly, though.
The Computer History Museum is waiting for a signature on a release of the Alto
software for non-commercial use. When that happens, I'll put up some other images
that I've been holding on to.

[geophoto3]

yksoft - thanks for the windows build! Nice!
Al - thanks for the tip - I'll give it a try. I really hope you get the permission you need. I'd love to see more of this important historical stuff available.

[Mooses_Valley]

Awesome work on the emulator.
And thanks to yksoft1 for the Windows version. I am very keen to try it out, but the Mediafire download link does not work (file not available). Can someone please re-upload ? TIA.

Edit: Before anyone says "Google is your friend", I searched on Salto +Windows +MinGW and similar searches in Google and got no results that provided a working download.

[JustZisGuy]

Actually they did release a bunch of Alto files: http://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/

But these aren't in disk image format, and I'm not sure if anyone has gotten any of that going under SALTO.

[shirriff]

I tried out the Salto simulator at https://github.com/brainsqueezer/salto_simulator and it's very cool. Is that the latest version? Are there more disk images available? Is anyone currently doing development on it? I'm working on restoring an Alto, so I want to learn more about how the software works

Ken

[TheDosProgrammer]

My real interest is in Smalltalk 76. The disk image is there, but it either does not work or I don't know how to start it. Any hints?

In order to get Smalltalk 76 working you'll need another Xerox Alto emulator called ContrAlto: http://www.livingcomputers.org/News/Ann ... lator.aspx. It is very slow so you must be patient. Loading Smalltalk can take up to 20 minutes.


With some luck you can get image editor working .