Re: Emulation of IBM i

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 09:53:06AM -0500, Jim Oberholtzer wrote:

A project like that is doomed to failure from the start. Reason:
Privileged instructions and system state items cannot be replicated on to
Intel simply because those instructions don't exist.

Isn't the whole point of an emulator to emulate hardware features /
instructions that don't exist on the host platform? I think the number of
existing mainframe and mini emulators out there would suggest that it could
be done. That doesn't mean that it should be done, just that it's within
the realm of possibility.

Writing an OS with single level storage might be possible on Intel, but
that's ignoring all the work that is done by IOP/IOA cards and such.

All the work done by all the hardware of the original platform would have to
be emulated. If a Honeywell DPS-8/M emulator capable of running Multics can
be written for the Intel platform:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_6000_series

https://github.com/charlesUnixPro/dps8m

just about anything is possible.