If you want to stay fluid with using simh, it's probably better to just install simh on a machine and run it.
No doubt, but I think the point is that there are a lot of cheap (in many cases, $10 or less), lower-power machines on which you can run simh at better-than-real performance. I run simh on my server, but not generally continuously because it tends to take 100% CPU, which means a few tens of watts of difference (which is not huge, but still). If I want to burn some power, I'll turn on my real 11/44. :-)
I'm right there with you on that. Now that I've gotten it reloaded after it shat all over its SD card, I'm running mine 24/7. It sits there next to my desk (currently) in the OS/8 console I/O polling loop, projecting waves of comfort toward me as I get stressed out putting out the fires caused by other peoples' incompetence.
I have my PiDP on the mantle above the fireplace running a slow deeper thought in 777 mode. Just finished a headless CHIP that's attached to a VT220. It's networked wirelessly, I can grab via CRON job the lpt.txt output file every 10 minutes to send "mail" from the simulator that way. Took 2 hours to MAKE them all. Posted more how to on my site