4 ms·

OS/360 on Hercules: Overview (2003)

67 points by Koshkin 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
trangus_1985 5y ago
For what it's worth, this guy is also known as "Tron Guy", one of the first widespread famous internet meme/personalities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Maynard#/media/File:Tronguy.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Maynard#/media/File:Trongu...
nazgulsenpai 5y ago
(2003)
- mianos 5y ago
  Also notable: "This whole process will take an hour or so. On a 500 MHz Pentium III laptop with 384 MB of RAM, "
Borlands 5y ago
Project homepage link in the article is outdated and points to a sport bets website. Wikipedia article includes a good link: https://sdl-hercules-390.github.io/html/ https://sdl-hercules-390.github.io/html/
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  Still actively maintained: https://github.com/SDL-Hercules-390/hyperion https://github.com/SDL-Hercules-390/hyperion And it runs on MacOS
Someone 5y ago
The next page is “Getting started” (http://www.conmicro.com/hercos360/getstarted.html http://www.conmicro.com/hercos360/getstarted.html). It says: “The best source is the CBT CD-ROM, which contains Rick Fochtman's OS/360 distribution. This has not only the OS/360 distribution files, but also the source to the operating system and utilities, as well as some useful documentation. There are many, many other useful files and utilities on the disk, and it's a must for anyone wanting to experiment with OS/360, as well as any systems programmer on a modern OS/390 or z/OS system. Ordering information is at the CBT Tape site.” That CBT Tape site is a sight to behold even if you have no plans to run OS/360: https://www.cbttape.org/ https://www.cbttape.org/. Bonus link: https://www.cbttape.org/funny/bug3.jpg https://www.cbttape.org/funny/bug3.jpg
- J5892 5y ago
  Ooh, a webring!
zxcvbn4038 5y ago
I love the idea - if you look hard enough you can find an OS/390 or z/OS torrent - but most of the Hercules emulator documents haven’t been updated in twenty years and I don’t think there has been a software release in approx seven years. I’ve never been clear if the project is still active.
- jhgb 5y ago
  The Hyperion fork seems to be quite active.
  - zxcvbn4038 5y ago
    Found it - https://github.com/hercules-390/hyperion https://github.com/hercules-390/hyperion
    - jhgb 5y ago
      You didn't have to "find it"; it's been there for many years. ;)
anyfoo 5y ago
It's a fun experience to install MVS 3.8j (apparently 40 years old by now), using the Hyperion fork, to get a taste of how utterly different mainframe computing was (and still is). If you've never dealt with mainframes, which is extremely likely after all, you will be massively taken aback about how different everything is. A lot of the most fundamental terms you are used to, like "file" or "directory", simply don't exist. Some have equivalents with other names, but even if they do they're often so different that you barely recognize them at all... It's like finding a computer on an alien planet. Interestingly, the later "midrange" AS/400 (or maybe also its predecessor System/36 which I don't know about) is also completely different from mainstream computing, but in something that I'd describe as the opposite way of how MVS is different. While MVS lets you feel the bare metal at every turn (making such simple things as using the closest thing to a file, a "dataset", sometimes rather bizarre), AS/400 does the opposite and abstracts everything away. Going as far as having a 128bit unified address space, which addresses both RAM and hard disk storage and everything in between...
- jhgb 5y ago
  > If you've never dealt with mainframes, which is extremely likely after all, you will be massively taken aback about how different everything is. Funnily enough my alma mater recently made Introduction to Mainframes a mandatory subject for a software engineering course. So if you can't use z/OS on a (very) basic level, you can't graduate. :)
- Spooky23 5y ago
  AS/400 is an interesting system. When IBM stopped supporting circa 1999 25 MHz PowerPC system at a friends company in 2010, I learned a bit about it in getting rid of it. Other than CEs replacing hard disks a few times, and an Ethernet upgrade, it was undisturbed by anyone other than the end users. The server had restarted ~20 times, by power outages. Crazy stuff.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  This machine at my desk is already emulating a Sparcstation 5, a Mac Pro and a Windows 2019 machine. I might give this a crack just so I have an excuse to try to get one of the 3270 terminal emulators running. Like x3270 or one of those things that used to float around. I assume you need to emulate a terminal concentrator somehow along with the mainframe itself?
dfox 5y ago
Today, probably the easiest way to run MVS in Hercules is this: http://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/ http://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/

67 points by Koshkin 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

trangus_1985 5y ago

For what it's worth, this guy is also known as "Tron Guy", one of the first widespread famous internet meme/personalities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Maynard#/media/File:Tronguy.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Maynard#/media/File:Trongu...

nazgulsenpai 5y ago

(2003)

mianos 5y ago
Also notable: "This whole process will take an hour or so. On a 500 MHz Pentium III laptop with 384 MB of RAM, "

Borlands 5y ago

Project homepage link in the article is outdated and points to a sport bets website. Wikipedia article includes a good link: https://sdl-hercules-390.github.io/html/ https://sdl-hercules-390.github.io/html/

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
Still actively maintained: https://github.com/SDL-Hercules-390/hyperion https://github.com/SDL-Hercules-390/hyperion And it runs on MacOS

Someone 5y ago

The next page is “Getting started” (http://www.conmicro.com/hercos360/getstarted.html http://www.conmicro.com/hercos360/getstarted.html). It says: “The best source is the CBT CD-ROM, which contains Rick Fochtman's OS/360 distribution. This has not only the OS/360 distribution files, but also the source to the operating system and utilities, as well as some useful documentation. There are many, many other useful files and utilities on the disk, and it's a must for anyone wanting to experiment with OS/360, as well as any systems programmer on a modern OS/390 or z/OS system. Ordering information is at the CBT Tape site.” That CBT Tape site is a sight to behold even if you have no plans to run OS/360: https://www.cbttape.org/ https://www.cbttape.org/. Bonus link: https://www.cbttape.org/funny/bug3.jpg https://www.cbttape.org/funny/bug3.jpg

J5892 5y ago
Ooh, a webring!

zxcvbn4038 5y ago

I love the idea - if you look hard enough you can find an OS/390 or z/OS torrent - but most of the Hercules emulator documents haven’t been updated in twenty years and I don’t think there has been a software release in approx seven years. I’ve never been clear if the project is still active.

jhgb 5y ago
The Hyperion fork seems to be quite active.
- zxcvbn4038 5y ago
  Found it - https://github.com/hercules-390/hyperion https://github.com/hercules-390/hyperion
  - jhgb 5y ago
    You didn't have to "find it"; it's been there for many years. ;)

anyfoo 5y ago

It's a fun experience to install MVS 3.8j (apparently 40 years old by now), using the Hyperion fork, to get a taste of how utterly different mainframe computing was (and still is). If you've never dealt with mainframes, which is extremely likely after all, you will be massively taken aback about how different everything is. A lot of the most fundamental terms you are used to, like "file" or "directory", simply don't exist. Some have equivalents with other names, but even if they do they're often so different that you barely recognize them at all... It's like finding a computer on an alien planet. Interestingly, the later "midrange" AS/400 (or maybe also its predecessor System/36 which I don't know about) is also completely different from mainstream computing, but in something that I'd describe as the opposite way of how MVS is different. While MVS lets you feel the bare metal at every turn (making such simple things as using the closest thing to a file, a "dataset", sometimes rather bizarre), AS/400 does the opposite and abstracts everything away. Going as far as having a 128bit unified address space, which addresses both RAM and hard disk storage and everything in between...

jhgb 5y ago
> If you've never dealt with mainframes, which is extremely likely after all, you will be massively taken aback about how different everything is. Funnily enough my alma mater recently made Introduction to Mainframes a mandatory subject for a software engineering course. So if you can't use z/OS on a (very) basic level, you can't graduate. :)
Spooky23 5y ago
AS/400 is an interesting system. When IBM stopped supporting circa 1999 25 MHz PowerPC system at a friends company in 2010, I learned a bit about it in getting rid of it. Other than CEs replacing hard disks a few times, and an Ethernet upgrade, it was undisturbed by anyone other than the end users. The server had restarted ~20 times, by power outages. Crazy stuff.
smackeyacky 5y ago
This machine at my desk is already emulating a Sparcstation 5, a Mac Pro and a Windows 2019 machine. I might give this a crack just so I have an excuse to try to get one of the 3270 terminal emulators running. Like x3270 or one of those things that used to float around. I assume you need to emulate a terminal concentrator somehow along with the mainframe itself?

dfox 5y ago

Today, probably the easiest way to run MVS in Hercules is this: http://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/ http://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/