Ersatz-11 includes support for user-written emulation plug-ins. The "full" DOS version also supports digital I/O boards.
E11 emulates the DR11C and DRV11 PIO digital I/O cards using The Logical Company's DCI-1300 PCI card, which comes with an external "brick" which has the same two 40-pin connectors as the DEC cards, for an exact replacement. This support currently works in the DOS version of E11 only, but will be in an update to the Linux version soon.
E11 also emulates the DR11W and DRV11WA DMA digital I/O cards using Engineering Design Team's PCI 11W card, which can be ordered with an external cable which similarly has the same two 40-pin connectors as the DEC cards. This support is in the full DOS version of E11 only.
| dev name | controller types | description | E11 versions |
|---|---|---|---|
| OA: | DR11C, DRV11 | Unibus/Q-bus programmed I/O card | "full" DOS/Windows |
| XA: | DR11W, DRV11WA | Unibus/Q-bus DMA I/O card | "full" DOS/Windows |
The INSTALL command in all versions of E11 other than E11 Lite provides the very powerful ability to add special-purpose emulations to E11's complement of emulated PDP-11 devices. Modules are written in C (either Open Watcom or Digital Mars C) or assembly language, and linked as Win32-style .DLL files, which E11 loads and links to its internal API entry points. This API allows the plug-in to perform all necessary duties such as handling I/O page accesses, enqueueing and dequeueing emulated interrupt requests, transferring data between PDP-11 memory and host memory, etc. Programming information is included in the E11 manual, and the required header and import library files are included in the distribution kit.
Plug-in modules have already been written to do the following: