On Jun 17, 2026, at 2:29 PM, David Wade via cctalk <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 17/06/2026 19:48, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: >> A bit tangential, but… speaking of Assembler, I remember hearing >> decades ago that Multics was 85% PL/1 and 15% assembler. Has anybody >> gotten Multics running on modern hardware, such as Intel? — probably a >> better platform for it than the GE 645 or Honeywell 6180. > > Multics assumes multiple security levels in Hardware and single level storage > so I think its simpler to write a hardware emulator for the Honeywell/Bull > hardware that shoehorn it onto x86. > I think even creating the hardware emulator, which does exist, but which I > haven't used, might be fun as the machines used to run Multics have 36-bit > words which can be treated as a word, 6 by 6-bit characters or 4 x 9-bit > characters. I believe Multics generally uses the 4 x 9-bit byte format for > character data, except when running GCOS 3/8 EMULATION so I am not sure how > you handle this on Intel. > > Dave > G4UGM > Former Systems Programmer on Honeywell Level66/DP300 whos hardware formed the > basis for the Multics machines.
Multics has been running on modern hardware for years via emulation. It works just fine on a Raspberry Pi, and it amuses me to have it running on a system the size of a deck of cards, when I think about the DPS-8’s I used to work on (running GCOS-8). Sadly, as far as I know, no one has gotten GCOS running, as I don’t know of anyone with the software. https://gitlab.com/dps8m/dps8m https://dps8m.gitlab.io/dps8m/ https://multics-wiki.swenson.org/ Zane
