Re: "My next project once I finish my IBM 1410 FPGA implementation (so, a couple of years out, probably) would be to write an emulator for the boat anchor known as the IBM 8100. I had exposure to these things back in the 1980s." I encountered one, once. Probably 1979, in a small conference room in building 47U of Hewlett-Packard's Cupertino site. Sitting all alone in the room. I was looking at it, and an HP engineer came in and explained that they were waiting for IBM service to fix the memory board ... the board HP had removed to look at closely :)