I wasn't able to build vi for the v7 image easily available for simh, but Webb Miller's 's' editor wasn't too tough (it has similar keybindings), and the version with the minor tweaks needed for it is up at: https://github.com/athornton/s

On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 5:18 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
    > From: Dave Horsfall

    > Weren't V5/6/7/etc distributed as bootable tapes?  Set the switch register
    > to point to the tape instead of the disk...

Yes. See here:

  https://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_UNIX_Sixth_Edition
  https://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_Unix_Seventh_Edition

for the details of how it works.

    Noel