Many of us used “big iron” back in the day. Computers like the IBM S/360 or 3090 are hard to find, transport, and operate, so you don’t see many retrocomputer enthusiasts with an S/370 in their garages. We’ve known for a while that the Hercules emulators would let you run virtual copies of these old mainframes, but every time we’ve looked at setting any up, it winds up being more work than we wanted to spend. Enter [Ernie] of [ErnieTech’s Little Mainframes]. He’s started a channel to show you how to “build” your own mainframe — emulated, of course.
One problem with the mainframe environment is that there are a bunch of operating system-like things like MVS, VM/CMS, and TSO. There were even custom systems like MUSIC/SP, which he shows in the video below.
On top of that, you have to learn a lot of new software. Scripting? Rexx. Editing? Several choices, but none you are likely to know about if you haven’t used a mainframe before. Programming languages? You can find C sometimes, but it might not be a modern dialect. You might have more luck with FORTRAN or COBOL.
In addition, IBM has specific terms for things we don’t use in the rest of the world. Boot? IPL (initial program load). Disk? DASD. Security? RACF.
So far, [Ernie] only has an overview and a short demo. If you can’t wait, cruise over to the Hercules page and see how far you can get. You may decide to wait for [Ernie’s] next video.
If you want to shortcut, there are entire environments in Docker that can be handy. If your IBM nostalgia runs to the smaller System/3, AS/400, or POWER systems, someone already has something ready for you to use.
As it happens I already do that. Typically running a (prebuilt) VM/370 Release 6 setup on Hercules, and typically running it inside a WSL defined image of Slackware Linux, and using an IBM terminal emulator program for that.
Oh and the page you’re linked to is the even earlier release of 3.07, it’s now at 3.13 and a very special 4.7. Details on where to find it all is on the group page for Hercules.
Why bother with Windows in the first place if Linux is what gets the job done?
IBM uses some of those same names in the AIX world.
DASD is Direct Attach Storage Device. I had to IPL a couple of AIX servers last night after applying a kernel patch.
Nice. I checked out Hercules a while back. I got pretty far with either a VM/CMS system or VM/370 system (can’t remember exactly). Two places I got stuck were the TCP/IP stack and transferring files to/from the virtual machine. Used to love the REXX programming language and still have a book or two on it. Most of the time though, we had to run programs in a non-interactive mode by submitting “jobs” with JCL (Job Control Language). If I recall correctly, one of my books on JCL said that the more you know it, the harder it got. Chatting on Bitnet Relays was cool too.
Man, I think I’m going to have to try this again. Thanks for the links!
Bitnet … memoooorieeees … \o/
I thought this post was about texas red and the Arizona ranger
I thought it was about soldering.
As someone who uses TSO daily, I approve.
Cleaning out my brother’s house. Looking at couple of 5081 punchcards right now :-)
Also found a forms ruler…those were the days.
IIRC, there are a few actual mainframes online…a CDC in Europe and that IBM monster that the guys in the UK rescued from Germany?
Not quite up and running, apparently…https://www.ibm360.co.uk/?p=916
I live in the Washington, DC, area so not too far from the System Source Museum. I went to the open house when they opened the new gallery with the IBM 360. Some of the guys who donated it were there. They plan to get it running eventually. The first step is to get a 50Hz supply of the necessary amperage!
Oh, I didn’t see any reference to it on the above link.
They need to update their website.
Trivia for the 1-in-10,000 crowd: The ‘360’ in System/360 refers to the number of degrees in a circle: This computer was designed to address the entire field of possible computer applications.
But why limit yourself to 360 degrees in a plane? The ‘360-derivative IBM System/4Pi is designed for aerospace/military applications: 4Pi refers to the number of steradians in a 3D space.
(If you are one of the lucky ones who don’t get the 1-in-10,000 reference: https://xkcd.com/1053/ )
So the 370 was actualy only a 10 degrees computer ?
Not at all. It had the bonus ten degrees of retrace (says I, looking at one of my last remaining yellow cards, from before the card became a booklet)
I’ve always been fascinated by acronyms from IBM.
The first conpany I worked for fist had an IBM360 with DOS/VSE and of course CICS, then we got a 3090 with VM/CMS which migrated latter to MVS/TSO IIRC.
REXX was a very cool scripting tool, we all loved it. I also used JCL sometime but IPL was not part of my job.
While everybody used 3270 (24×80) terminals from Memorex, I was the only one to get an APA terminal (all points addressable = graphical) that used an extension called GDDM (graphical data display manager). I used it to get graphics charts from SQL requests from the DB2 database.
What I appreciated the most was the very good documentation provided by IBM. Most common docs was easily available but for the APA & GDDM docs I had to ask very nicely to the system engineer because he had only one available and he was not willing to share it ! After all it was HIS computer and HIS docs…
Still have some of these docs and also part of the console pannel form the 360 in my junkroom !
“On top of that, you have to learn a lot of new software.”
No! You only need to learn BAL.
B^)
Which version? Which installation?
The one you are familiar with.
B^)
Single task OSs like fig Forth and Intel MCS BASIC-52 rescued this author from mainframe OSs like IBM OS 360.
Secure apps require that only the app code be present of a platform. All other possible binaries are regarded
as possible malware.
Accountability at the big level required. ~”Please tell me what that bit does. I want to see the source code.”
A multitasker has nothing to do with a secure app?
Machine Assembly and System Programming on the I. B. M. 360 mainframe OS revulsion caused
Implementing BASICs: How BASICs Work
https://www.wang2200.org/2200tech/Implementing%20BASICs.pdf
and
Embedded Controller Forth For The 8051 Family
https://www.google.com/search?q=embedded+controller+forth+for+the+8051&oq=embedded+controller+forth+for+the+8051&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i65.14127j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
to be written.
Are there bugs in AI floating point hardware implementations such as NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, ARM, …
For this a a 64 bit fixed and floating point gcc c portable transparent add, multiply, one’s complement needed to 128 bit accuracy, of course. unsigned char c[63]; :)——–
Multitasking Ubuntu, Windows 10 and 11 run on <$150 laptops used for fixed floating point arithmetic development.
Multitasking OS fine for many apps … provided 1 bugs 2 malware vulnerabilities and 3 endless series of updates/upgrades can be overlooked?
These issues can lead to software company bankruptcies?
“Editing? Several choices, but none you are likely to know about if you haven’t used a mainframe before.”
As I recall, “editing” was card sorting/stacking. At some point you learned to use the keypunch feature that let you copy one card to another character by character, so you could insert or delete within a line. (I DON’T remember the details of how to do that.)
Well, I never expected to be highlighted on Hackaday! I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that my channel has it’s influences from Moshix, HS Tech Channel and other amazing people. If you don’t know Moshix, look him up.
There are boatloads of mainframe knowledge repositories out there, but they’re all over the place, most haven’t been updated in ages and the content seems to fade away not too long after the basics, leaving you kind of wondering “well, now what do I do?”
Granted, I just IPL’d my Youtube channel and there’s not much of content yet, but I’m working diligently to remedy that.
ErnieTech
I was just about to leave a shout out to Moshix’s channel as well. I will definitely give your channel a look too! I would love to play around with some of this stuff if I ever have the time. We had MUSIC on our 4381 back in college.
I’m not dying to write JCL ever again.
I am convinced no one can write JCL from scratch. Every mainframe coder/operator takes a working JCL script and modifies it until they think it’ll do what they need it to. 15 iterations later, it mostly works.