6 ms·

The Hercules emulator allows you to run various OS/360 and later systems in emulation under Windows, Mac, Linux and most other Unixes also, in case you wanted t

The Hercules emulator allows you to run various OS/360 and later systems in emulation under Windows, Mac, Linux and most other Unixes also, in case you wanted to try it out yourself.

rbanffy 3y ago
You can try your hand with one of my Docker images. docker run -it -p 3270:3270 rbanffy/vm370 Then connect your 3270 client(s) to port 3270 on localhost and play like it’s the 1970’s. Disclaimer: that image has a 370, the successor of the 360. For this image, user CMSUSER has password CMSUSER, user MAINT (has more privileges) has password CPCMS. I now forgot the password for OPERATOR. I’ll post it here when I remember what it was. This image is built on the Sixpack distribution of VM/370. Google for it and you’ll find lots of information.
- usr1106 3y ago
  VM/370 is something like a hypervisor, CMS is a single user operating system mostly for development tasks. In production other operating systems were used, maybe MVS? Not sure whether it worked already like this in the 360 area.
  - p_l 3y ago
    CMS was used not so much for development as for setups that really focused on interactive time sharing approaches, vs "extra special batch job" of TSO under MVS
    - usr1106 3y ago
      I was a trainee in an IBM lab nearly 40 years ago. All developers including myself worked using VM/CMS. That I remember for sure. With production workloads I had nothing to do, so I am not sure what was the most commonly used OS. Pretty sure no bank clerk, airline counter or similar ran CMS.
      - p_l 3y ago
        Talking with some elder developers, it always seemed to me that VM/CMS combination was mainly popular at universities and labs, so arguably a related environment. Probably was helped once people figured how to also run DOS and MVS under VM. Airline Counters of course ran (and some still do) TPF, and serving massive amounts of users with standardised forms was much easier with CICS (I seem to recall a story about some retail chain actually running their POS on single mainframe in 1970s with each retail clerk using a 3270-compatible terminal to access CICS forms).
        usr1106 3y ago
        Yes, CICS came to my mind. But CICS is not an operating system, it needs one to be run AFAIK. The Wikipedia article says it runs under VM/MVS or VM/VSE. OS/360 was discontinued. MVS is listed as one of its successors. So I believe, while interesting, the VM/CMS emulator/simulator mentioned above is only representing System/370 period, not System/360. I am certainly not an expert on the matter. Edit: Following a couple of Wikipedia links tells that in the 360 period something called CM/CMS existed. It seems only loosely related to the VM/CMS used in the 370 period. Edit 2: For an emulator see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(emulator) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(emulator) Edit 3: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM_mainframe_operating_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM_mainframe_ope... seem worth reading. The 360 chapter links nicely to TFA, e.g. The Mythical Man-Month.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        p_l 3y ago
        VM/CMS from my understanding started in System/360 period, but it was not really something advertised - initial versions ran on specific models only, and even later on it wasn't necessarily available to officially purchase.
        usr1106 3y ago
- ngcc_hk 3y ago
  Get my 3270, show VM/370. As an MVS/DB2 guy, not sure what to do next. Any CMS tutorial for this Hercules based VM/370 I wonder. (The MVS side is easier for me and even can do some old time compliation of ISPF ...)
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    You can check in the vm370.org website. They publish the VM/370 Community Edition (which is a lot like the one I packed - the CE version is rbanffy/vm370ce on the command line). I'm still very much a newbie on this.
    - ngcc_hk 3y ago
      running last 2 days and get my fortran compiled etc. Just whenever I logoff and quit the emulator, all are lost!!! Just double check, logoff will keep the files. But as there is no way to shutdown the terminal system it seems, I just quit and all are lost. I did download my files one by one to my pc using Tom. I will look at the vm 370 but wonder whether it will be too hard, as there is no setup like tk5 and like your docker. Yours seems just one command away (and change the port to non-3270 to avoid conflict with my mvs.) And tk5 just run. I do not know how even to start the vm 370 community edition after download!
      - rbanffy 3y ago
        You’d need to restart the container rather than running it again from scratch for the state changes to stick. I'm thinking about modifying the shadow disk setup (the base disk is immutable and only the shadow file is changed) to make the shadow folder persistent, but that'd be better done at the cluster management level.
  - Koshkin 3y ago
    MVS TK5 has (a clone of) ISPF built in. https://www.prince-webdesign.nl/tk5 https://www.prince-webdesign.nl/tk5
    - 3y ago

The Hercules emulator allows you to run various OS/360 and later systems in emulation under Windows, Mac, Linux and most other Unixes also, in case you wanted to try it out yourself.

rbanffy 3y ago

You can try your hand with one of my Docker images. docker run -it -p 3270:3270 rbanffy/vm370 Then connect your 3270 client(s) to port 3270 on localhost and play like it’s the 1970’s. Disclaimer: that image has a 370, the successor of the 360. For this image, user CMSUSER has password CMSUSER, user MAINT (has more privileges) has password CPCMS. I now forgot the password for OPERATOR. I’ll post it here when I remember what it was. This image is built on the Sixpack distribution of VM/370. Google for it and you’ll find lots of information.

usr1106 3y ago
VM/370 is something like a hypervisor, CMS is a single user operating system mostly for development tasks. In production other operating systems were used, maybe MVS? Not sure whether it worked already like this in the 360 area.
- p_l 3y ago
  CMS was used not so much for development as for setups that really focused on interactive time sharing approaches, vs "extra special batch job" of TSO under MVS
  - usr1106 3y ago
    I was a trainee in an IBM lab nearly 40 years ago. All developers including myself worked using VM/CMS. That I remember for sure. With production workloads I had nothing to do, so I am not sure what was the most commonly used OS. Pretty sure no bank clerk, airline counter or similar ran CMS.
    - p_l 3y ago
      Talking with some elder developers, it always seemed to me that VM/CMS combination was mainly popular at universities and labs, so arguably a related environment. Probably was helped once people figured how to also run DOS and MVS under VM. Airline Counters of course ran (and some still do) TPF, and serving massive amounts of users with standardised forms was much easier with CICS (I seem to recall a story about some retail chain actually running their POS on single mainframe in 1970s with each retail clerk using a 3270-compatible terminal to access CICS forms).
      - usr1106 3y ago
        Yes, CICS came to my mind. But CICS is not an operating system, it needs one to be run AFAIK. The Wikipedia article says it runs under VM/MVS or VM/VSE. OS/360 was discontinued. MVS is listed as one of its successors. So I believe, while interesting, the VM/CMS emulator/simulator mentioned above is only representing System/370 period, not System/360. I am certainly not an expert on the matter. Edit: Following a couple of Wikipedia links tells that in the 360 period something called CM/CMS existed. It seems only loosely related to the VM/CMS used in the 370 period. Edit 2: For an emulator see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(emulator) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(emulator) Edit 3: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM_mainframe_operating_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM_mainframe_ope... seem worth reading. The 360 chapter links nicely to TFA, e.g. The Mythical Man-Month.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        p_l 3y ago
        VM/CMS from my understanding started in System/360 period, but it was not really something advertised - initial versions ran on specific models only, and even later on it wasn't necessarily available to officially purchase.
        usr1106 3y ago
ngcc_hk 3y ago
Get my 3270, show VM/370. As an MVS/DB2 guy, not sure what to do next. Any CMS tutorial for this Hercules based VM/370 I wonder. (The MVS side is easier for me and even can do some old time compliation of ISPF ...)
- rbanffy 3y ago
  You can check in the vm370.org website. They publish the VM/370 Community Edition (which is a lot like the one I packed - the CE version is rbanffy/vm370ce on the command line). I'm still very much a newbie on this.
  - ngcc_hk 3y ago
    running last 2 days and get my fortran compiled etc. Just whenever I logoff and quit the emulator, all are lost!!! Just double check, logoff will keep the files. But as there is no way to shutdown the terminal system it seems, I just quit and all are lost. I did download my files one by one to my pc using Tom. I will look at the vm 370 but wonder whether it will be too hard, as there is no setup like tk5 and like your docker. Yours seems just one command away (and change the port to non-3270 to avoid conflict with my mvs.) And tk5 just run. I do not know how even to start the vm 370 community edition after download!
    - rbanffy 3y ago
      You’d need to restart the container rather than running it again from scratch for the state changes to stick. I'm thinking about modifying the shadow disk setup (the base disk is immutable and only the shadow file is changed) to make the shadow folder persistent, but that'd be better done at the cluster management level.
- Koshkin 3y ago
  MVS TK5 has (a clone of) ISPF built in. https://www.prince-webdesign.nl/tk5 https://www.prince-webdesign.nl/tk5
  - 3y ago