GoKawiilDeveloper builds early-stage Mitra-15 emulator for SIMH simulator framework
A developer is building a simulator for CII's Mitra-15, a French 16-bit minicomputer from the early 1970s, by adapting an existing SDS 940 simulator within the SIMH framework. The project is still in an early, incomplete stage, with core instruction sets, memory management, and numerous peripheral devices like disks, tape readers, and various I/O channels still to be implemented. The developer relied heavily on documentation compiled by Pascal Chour due to the scarcity of surviving Mitra-15 materials.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
The Mitra-15 once powered French industrial, telecom, and military systems, including telephone exchanges, but almost no software or documentation from that era survives today. Grassroots emulation efforts like this one are often the only way to preserve knowledge of obscure historical computing architectures before they're lost entirely, especially for machines with unconventional designs like microcode-driven I/O instead of DMA.
- A hobbyist is adapting an SDS 940 SIMH simulator to emulate CII's Mitra-15 minicomputer.
- The Mitra-15, used in French industry and telecom, has little surviving documentation or software.
- The project remains a work in progress, missing key instructions, memory management, and peripheral support.
The C Programming Language (K&R, 2nd Edition) — If your C is "rusty" like this Mitra-15 simulator author's, K&R is still the classic way to sharpen it back up. It's a compact, no-nonsense reference that pairs perfectly with hacking on SIMH emulator source code for vintage minicomputers.
See The C Programming Language (K&R, 2nd Edition) on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.Source: github.com, 2026-08-27
Published there as: “French CII's Mitra-15 in SIMH. Work in Progress”
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