On 2026-06-17 9:07 p.m., Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:
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
Get a FRONT PANEL build for the PI. That would make better hardware use
than a PDP-8 or 11
and another blinking lights computer.
Ben.
