APL on the 5100/5110/5120 was based on the IBM mainframe APL/SV, (follow-on to APL\360),
with several added features. The "360 emulator" was not a full emulator of
360/370, but only emulated exactly those instructions needed by the APL interpreter (that
was written in 360/370 assembler language).
Similarly, the System/3 emulator that was developed for the 5100/5110/5120 BASIC
implemented only those instructions that were needed by the S/3 BASIC software. System/3
was a machine with limited amounts of real CORE memory, so developers recognized early on
that they needed to implement a kind of a "virtual machine" for BASIC, and that
was coded in S/3 assembler language. This layer also provided the "virtual"
memory for BASIC use, done via "software paging" on a machine (S/3) that had no
hardware for virtual memory, relocation, etc.
See also:
https://www.glennsmuseum.com/items/s3m6/
Glenn Henry was instrumental in the development of the S/3 Model 6 BASIC, and later led
the effort to create the IBM System/38. He was eventually promoted to become an IBM
Fellow. The design of the virtual instruction set used for S/3 BASIC was used to create
the "scientific instructions" for the S/32, S/34 and S/36 that was used by BASIC
and FORTRAN on those systems.
Mark S Waterbury