Awesome, Lou, thanks for the wonderfully detailed explanation...more than I could ever have got from a manual!  That could only have been written by a fellow who's spent many hours in the FE seat?

So, to sum up, it's not the status of whether you're on the ground or not as I had guessed.  The pressurization system is working (the system is adjusting the cabin altitude towards the selected goal by the chosen rate) when either or both of the packs are on and the airplane is sealed up.  

When no packs are on, or the doors are open, the goal becomes the outside air pressure.  With packs off but cabin sealed, use the rate selected.  If a door is open, it's much more rapid.

Manual overrides auto and sets rate independent of the normal rate dial - unless manual switch is in the auto range.

Pressure differential can not be negative and not exceed 9 PSI (what happens if it does?)

I love the level of detail in your reply, but I'm not going to try and implement all that.   At this point I just want a reasonably accurate implementation.  

We bump up against the fact that as simmers we are a one-man show trying to run a three-man airplane.   When I'm flying I can't be riding herd over this pressure controller to be smoothing out pressure bumps -- I'd probably crash while staring at the FE panel.  I've stalled once and crashed while testing!  Was annoying...

How about this for a workable mini-checklist.

1.  After engines are started and cabin sealed, set pressure goal 1,000 feet or so above field elevation and rate at 300-500FPM.

2.  Once established in the initial climb phase, set pressure goal to what you'll want it to be at cruise and let it start rising.

3.  At top of descent, set pressure to 1,000 feet above field level and rate to 200-300 FPM.  Try to avoid letting the airplane get ahead of the system, but let the controller itself prevent negative differentials on the way down.

4.  After landing set pressure to field elevation so as not to induce a surge when the doors get opened.

This may be a little more semi-automatic than the real thing, but still operated in basically the same way.  It should keep the altitude, rate of change and differential numbers within a reasonable range, without the huge amount of work, which is good enough for me while we wait for Captain Sim to fix it officially.

Dutch