Hercules (emulator)

Hercules is a computer emulator allowing software written for IBM mainframe computers (System/370, System/390, and zSeries/System z) and for plug compatible mainframes (such as Amdahl machines) to run on other types of computer hardware, notably on low-cost personal computers. Development started in 1999 by Roger Bowler, a mainframe systems programmer. Hercules runs under multiple parent operating systems including Linux, Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, and macOS and is released under the open source software license QPL. It is analogous to Bochs and QEMU in that it emulates CPU instructions and select peripheral devices only. A vendor (or distributor) must still provide an operating system, and the user must install it. Hercules was the first mainframe emulator to incorporate 64-bit z/Architecture support.