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I recently read an article about how most modern mainframe deployments (IBM excluded) are software emulation running on x86 platforms. That's really interesting

I recently read an article about how most modern mainframe deployments (IBM excluded) are software emulation running on x86 platforms. That's really interesting to me. If it wasn't for the proprietary nature of the software, I'd think mainframes would be more accessible than ever. It got me to wondering why old architectures that were consumer-targeted aren't also emulated for much more than nostalgic gamers and the niche who swear WordPerfect was the peak of word processors. My theory is that, for the most part, consumer hardware for small businesses and home offices ran consumer software. If my Apple II running VisiCalc dies and my business runs on it, I'm probably going to adopt Windows and Excel instead of trying to run VisiCalc in an emulator. With large businesses running COBOL apps on mainframes, that software is probably highly customized to their business and their workflow. It's probably cheaper to buy a license for an official emulator rather than trying to port or rewrite the software. Although, a part of me thinks it would be cool to run a web server on a blindingly fast, emulated Commodore 64.

toast0 4y ago
> I recently read an article about how most modern mainframe deployments (IBM excluded) are software emulation running on x86 platforms. That's not particularly new either. The k-12 school district I attended and worked at in information systems did that in 1996 or so. It was a small unisys mainframe, so only maybe 20 feet long, 3 feet deep and 3 feet tall, became a 4U box running emulation on NT4, I think quad pentium pro, but maybe it was only dual, cause I'm not convinced you could fit four ppros in 4U. That distict currently has 70 schools and 44,000 students. The mainframe was used for grades, schedules, payroll/personell files, etc. Had a terminal version of wordperfect on there too, as I recall (although, maybe that was on a different system, I was a desktop tech, I didn't get to work on real computers)
Gordonjcp 4y ago
> I recently read an article about how most modern mainframe deployments (IBM excluded) are software emulation running on x86 platforms I know where there are four thumping great Sun boxes running in production, each roughly the size of a bar fridge, with about as much computing power as a Raspberry Pi 4. If only you could run Solaris 8 and Oracle 10 on an RPi...

toast0 4y ago

> I recently read an article about how most modern mainframe deployments (IBM excluded) are software emulation running on x86 platforms. That's not particularly new either. The k-12 school district I attended and worked at in information systems did that in 1996 or so. It was a small unisys mainframe, so only maybe 20 feet long, 3 feet deep and 3 feet tall, became a 4U box running emulation on NT4, I think quad pentium pro, but maybe it was only dual, cause I'm not convinced you could fit four ppros in 4U. That distict currently has 70 schools and 44,000 students. The mainframe was used for grades, schedules, payroll/personell files, etc. Had a terminal version of wordperfect on there too, as I recall (although, maybe that was on a different system, I was a desktop tech, I didn't get to work on real computers)

Gordonjcp 4y ago

> I recently read an article about how most modern mainframe deployments (IBM excluded) are software emulation running on x86 platforms I know where there are four thumping great Sun boxes running in production, each roughly the size of a bar fridge, with about as much computing power as a Raspberry Pi 4. If only you could run Solaris 8 and Oracle 10 on an RPi...