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.