I'm 71 and left the mainframe world at 47 after 25 years of living and breathing assembler language programming and system mods. I MISS IT!! I know a lot has changed but this will be a great way of getting back in if just for fun. Great video. Can't wait to get the system up and running. I'm sure I'll be watching many more of your good work. Ron Kaminski - Prescott Valley, AZ.
Like Mr. Kaminski I started back in Jan. 1967 using assembler on a 360 model 30. It had 32k of memory and 3 2411 disk drives. And who could ever forget that screaming 1403 printer. I spent 37 years with those lovely mainframes. Ended up as system programmer on a 4381. Then into PC networks, web servers, etc. I am now 76 and Hercules and 3.8 are running on my PC. What a ride it has been!
Can't emphasize how important these videos by moshix are. Man you are awesome. I was going to start an internship for the summer but due to nCovid-19 my internship got delayed so i asked my manager is there anything i should learn while staying at home and she said learn COBOL, CICS and learn about mainframes. EVERYTHING is on your channel. Meticulous. Your teaching style, a little bit history of mainframes, languages , compiler reactions, everything you teach man i found SUPER important. Again Thank you very much for your hard work. Salute!
Make sure you head over to ibm master the mainframe challenge. They have some guided tour on ipsf and cobol stuff too. They give access to a mainframe to do some guided challenges. Also this is a bit late but Pluralsight was offering the month of April for free, they have one video course on cobol and getting around zOS. So between this channel and such, should be on a good path if you want to go do these things
The fact that you not only showed how to set everything up, but also taught us about the fundamentals and everything important!! Thanks a ton for this, I just started working with mainframes and was wondering how i could practice without messing with ibm's actual systems hahaha
I love your videos. I love big iron. I worked for IBM from 1967 to 2005. I started as a mainframe hardware guy. Later I became an MVS program support rep. I finished my career as a UNIX and networking specialist. Rock on!
Folks: this video is five years old, it may be a little out of date, but everything discussed in it can be found online somewhere. I have this running on my Ubuntu box just fine and am enjoying it just fine. Thank you, Moshix, for all your vids! 😊
Well I loaded and ran it on my windows 8.1 box. Worked exactly like the tutorial. Thanks. Next, Load it on my linux boxes.... THanks ! I have been wanting to run Hercules for years now, but was too much time and issues. This was so easy. (mainframer since 1975) Mickey
@@moshixmainframechannel It was the late 80's. I started out as a COBOL application developer and then migrated over to the Systems Programming group. I liked CICS more than MVS. Seeing u run IDCAMS and recognizing those VSAM file definitions brought back a flood of memories. And I don't know how many times I used =3.8 in ISPF! lol
Thanks ... I took 5 hours to complete just this 1 hour video .. generally i watch videos at x1.5 but with this sensitive video i used speed x0.5 and pause lots of time... back by 20 sec, 10 sec several times... finally fully watched and installed successfully, thanks... :) its 3:46am in the night now... good night..
Man, talk about a trip down memory lane. I was just a teenager when I started working at a bank’s data center running System/370. I ended up transitioning to the micro world, so never got around to programming on a mainframe. I spent many a weekend, however, poking around TSO trying to understand this beast.
I was always awed by the CICS SPIE and STAE startup messages. I thought that was so cool. I did end up doing a stint as a DB2 DBA fifteen years later, so that made my 16 year old self happy.
Thank you for the awesome crash course and walking down the history. Well, now we know who is your real love. spending your valentine's day with MVS :)
This is great stuff! Over the years I've seen mostly hardware-based products that allowed a "personal MVS" to exist, but never got to play with any. This looks like a great way to see how much one has forgotten or never learned about big iron. I've collected my share of emulator software over the years, and this seems to be more polished than most. Thanks for showing it to us!
I'm so happy that I found this channel. I'm really interested in computer history and old systems. Digging in slowly and had a great success today running it on my Linux system. I like the old ways computers were used to. But also enjoy watching your videos :D. Keep it going, thank you!
Wow, I can't believe I'm just seeing this one. Great presentation. First time, I've seen Hercules in operation. Yeah, though it would have been nice, as per for the 3390 drives, to have been of the mod-3's (2GB+). Though, I did noticed that's such old version of Cobol (OS Cobol), which predates any of the versions of Cobol that I used during my career. Yeah, I figured it's about licensing issues. Interesting, watching the system come up, remains me, this is the view that only the operators and system programmers see, that us TSO users don't see.
Very clear explanation. TY! Step @ 12:12 not needed. A personal path setting is enough. @24:14 editing a config file should be done in a text editor (ie notepad, from the creators of edlin) not a word editor (wordpad or word). @33:36 actually 18.045 is telling you current date: year (20)18 and day number 45: 14 feb
@@moshixmainframechannel Nice to have this "monster" up and running on my own hardware now! Was writing PL/I on TSO/ROSCOE using IMS/DB2 in the 80's for Dutch Airline industry. Been strugling with Hercules the last few years but was not able to run it properly. So TY again. looking forward to study more videos from you. I still have some private PL/I code i would like to run.
thanks for the great video, my company wants me to change stuff on the mainframe and pull data for business intelligence purposes, but nobody else around the office seems to know anything about it, so this is super helpful, RFE seems pretty similar to the ISPF environment we have at work
16 MB sounds huge. The IBM System/3 10 that I started in had a whole 24 KB of ferrite core memory. The OS consumed 4K, leaving 20K for the single user task. Yes, it was a batch machine.
Just thought I'd add my first foray into the mainframe world was in 1969 on a 360 model 20 that'd just switched from a Card Operating System to a Disk Operating System with one 1403 printer, one 2314 disk drive and 12K (that's right 'K') of memory. Ron Kaminski
I know you were just kidding around so, but by no means are you making a fool of yourself. Mainframes are a very unique world most of us never see or touch, so having someone guide us is immensely helpful. I even like your VMS videos as I do remember them! (Ah DecNET) In some ways, the young ones do need to see this because it shows how the plumbing works -- a lot of magic happens behind the scenes these days. Oh, and COBOL may be old, but of late, it's paying a lot of bills for people.
Oooh, I think I'm going to have to give this a go. intimidating but certainly logical. Who knows, a year from now I could be writing my own business code for the heck of it! :)
Since you're on Windows, you can 'tail' a file easily with Powershell so you don't have to keep opening it in notepad or similar: Get-Content prt\prt00e.txt -tail 1000 -wait assuming you're in the MVS3.8 directory
Hi MOSHIX!! I asked the same question to Tom Brennan about v2.00 and here is his answer: "V2.00 was my attempt at getting true-type fonts to work along with some other things like REXX as a macro language. But I stopped working on that version. Right now my latest version is the one on my download page, V1.27, other than a couple of test V1.28 versions that you might not want because they are not done yet." So, I guess that it is not not necessary to mention this v02.00 until it is completed. But, of course, it is up to you. I keep on installing the tools, then.
Fantastic presentation! I followed this video step by step and installed, tested and validated everything as described ... totally amazing. Thank you for sharing and explaining the key points. I plan to use this HERCULES environment to re-familiarize with BAL and understand more about the IBM architecture. Many thanks, this is a great teaching tool! And yes, mainframes are very much alive, more so than people think.
Never had heard of this before - fantastic video - during 1970s was a COBOL, Assembler, Fortran programmer in application software and ended up in system software support. Retired now. Obviously from your video, this emulator handles COBOL; what about Assembler (including Macro Assembler), and FORTRAN ?
I've found this video a really useful entry to the mainframe world. I now have TK4- running permanently on one of my Linux boxes. My tip is to replace the Hercules version bundled with TK4- with your own build of Hercules 4.x "Hyperion" from the repo on GitHub. The Hyperion code base seems to have some big performance improvements. You also get the benefit of the newer GCC compiler optimisation and - if you are so inclined - you can engineer a build that targets your specific CPU instruction set level. All in all, my peak MIPS is 5+ times faster than with the stock Hercules. But I do have a mainframe noob question that I really hope somebody might help me with. This is driving me nuts! When I enter a command at the TSO prompt and mess something up, I can't get back to the READY prompt. It just keeps saying "REENTER+ -". From what I read online, the PA1 key is supposed to break out of a command but for me PA1 just causes TSO to display what looks like a "|" (vertical bar, pipe, whatever) prompt. Pressing at that prompt just takes me back to "REENTER+ -". When this happens, my only workaround is to stop and restart TSO at the MVS console. Help!
@@moshixmainframechannel Thanks, but I'm afraid that makes no difference. I get the pipe, I press PA1 again, type QUIT, press and it goes right back to where I was. I must have spent hours over the last few days trying to figure this out. AAArrrggghh!
I'm in shock remembering one of my job nightmares. I saw that editor in 1999 while working in a bank, and being a software developer coming from the DOS and Windows world I was petrified when my boss started to show me that arcane editor (I remember the "full reader" and "member" things, I was horrified on how much work/typing its was required to edit a simple file!, prior I believed that Unix's "vi" was the worst editor I've seen!). Fortunately, despite knowing COBOL (I learned the RM-COBOL for PC, so it was easy using the *advanced* editors in DOS like QEdit), I wasn't assigned to create COBOL and JCL programs in the mainframe and PowerBuilder + Sybase stored procedures saved me. Ufff!
Yes, the Semware editor "QEdit", which was better than that integrated in Turbo-Pascal or Turbo-C++. Any of those editors were intuitive to use and didn't require training plus a command sheet in the wall.
moshix in the vista TN3270 Session A. Local host is not an option when I open it up to connect. I tried to input my own IP address with no luck. What could be my issue that I need to correct to connect
you could change the parm for cob step to produce assembler listing of compiled code ... i think so the specific option is list ... by default it is nolist ... you can then go to assembler listing and locate the code generated for the input statement [oops not input statement but first arithmetic statement that uses input field] and you will realize that 0c7 error is happening because it is attempting to pack input number in preparation to do arithmetic ... input number is in character format and that where i think it is failing because of trailing space characters in input field ... pack takes a number of characters and produce packed decimal format ... this will be converted to fullword binary format by cvb ... it will fail executing pack because there are trailing space characters ... one good way to learn assembler is to use list compiler option to produce assembler code generated by compiler
I don't know if it's changed but DMAP produced a Data Division map (assembler data names), and PMAP produced a Procedure Division map (assembler code).
Actually, on 58:50 most likely didn't change because you kept that selection mark, so windows just freezes the window until you remove that selection mark xD By the way, i'm going to be very fun to experiment with it, at least starting with C :)
I had a chance to go to a trade school way back to learn COBOL. I chose being in band. I have since gotten three degrees but all for the wrong reason, and all to please someone else. I wish I had listened to that person in the first place and went with that trade school. In recent years I have gravitated to the old languages and tech, maybe as a lament for older times, or because I think this is where they got it right. I hate smart devices. The internet has made the world worse in more ways than better. I still think there is a future in mainframes and COBOL, and that is what I choose to study now. On my own. Why not? lol
This is such a well-made and well-explained video! Thank you! I've acquired an apparently working IBM 3278 Mod 2 terminal that I would love to somehow connect to Hercules / MVS 3.8 as the system console. I know it's been done because I've seen pictures of it here and there on the web, but there are no details provided. Moshix, or anyone else, can you help me get started with this project, with any helpful links? I know an IBM 3274 controller or similar is involved, but the networking part escapes me. I was an IBM mainframe programmer for 30 years on DOS/VSE, VM, and MVS machines, and around 2003 I transitioned into Windows systems and network support as a career. I have never lost my love for IBM mainframes, though.
It's easy to to connect a 3278 to Hercules as the console if you have a 3274-R Ethernet (not token ring) establishment controller. You also need the right firmware floppy revision. Then it becomes feasible and it has been done before indeed
Thank you. Now to find a controller that still works! Are you talking about a 3174-11R? I don't know of any 3274 models with an "R" in it. I could try to contact someone at corestore.org that has had some pictures of this setup in the past.
This video was great and helped me get my system running. I have to get used to the editor not being ISPF. Then I want to see how much COBOL and REXX I can run. Have you checked out KICKS and is there something similar to DB2?
Hi Moshix, great video. I follwed it and all worked as expected (under Ubuntu). Do you have any idea why the terminal screen of Hercules is not updated as under Windows? Register contents are 0 most of the time and I could not adjust screen refresh rate. For someone like me with a lot of experience (programming and administration) outside the mainframe world, can you suggest an order to view your videos? Thank you!
This is really a great and very educational at that for us beginners. Anyway is there a way to do all the installation in a macbook? thanks in advance.
@@moshixmainframechannel Thanks Sir. Hope you don't mind my followup question, Is there any way to integrate z/OS to Hercules? Really appreciate your response.
At 80's I was a student at a university having IBM 4341. I learned pascal and fortran there. But there was something called CMS and we could create, edit, compile and run pascal/fortran files directly without creating jobs. Is CMS an alternative to MVS? Is there any emulator for it? Thanks for the nice video.
@@moshixmainframechannel ok, do you know of any other mainframe system for windows that can incorporate DB2 and CICS? Basically I'm trying to create a mainframe system in windows with cobol, Db2, cics, and jcl that I can use for training purposes only
@@moshixmainframechannel thank you for replying. Just want to ask if you have any reference materials or tutorial videos (or reference materials you can recommend) that sets up micro focus suite that includes CICS and DB2 in windows?
@moshix, where will i get all your other videos on mainframe, as this video of Hercules is incredible and i wish i knew it before i started on MVS mainframe. Great!!!!!
Not sure what's going on but as soon as Hercules starts the processors stop. The terminal emulator connects but it will not go any further than the tk4 initial panel
Hello Moshix, very good vidéo!! For my new job, I need to get familiar with z/OS. Do you have the same vidéo for z/OS? Or is it OK to learn with TK4 because there are small différences with z/OS?
@@cact25 I can't see the COBOL text, but clearly the input 100 is only 3 digits and the COBOL program is expecting four. IBM COBOL does NOT treat blank as a zero, and I doubt if the code processing the input bothered to test the validity of the input as numeric Try entering 0100, and I think you'll find it works!.
when using MVS emulator i am unable to go back to other screens from spool... is there any other options available? ... not able to use SWAPBAR ON option to access multiple screens
Thank you Moshix for this awesome resource. I can modify SYS2.JCLLIB(PRIMCOB1) and run it successfully. But the compiler/TK-4 invariably gives condition code 12 when I save & submit a "Hello World" Cobol program created in my own file. The compiler (or TK-4) complains about one or more of the DD statements in the JCL. I've made sure I'm typing the JCL DD statements exactly as they are in dataset SYS2.JCLLIB(PRIMCOB1). Is it that the DD statements in the JCL for PRIMCOB1 are not absolute paths? Per your suggestion I glanced at the user's manual, but it does not provide the kind of knowledge you impart in your videos. Are there any other resources you recommend for us who are new to mainframe programming? My expertise in AS/400 (and back-end systems) isn't helping me expedite my acquaintance with the mainframe realm.
This was a great video for getting the MVS 3.8J system up and running! I have not been able to find an old VTAM command reference. Anybody know what VTAM display commands were available at that level?
thanks much for the tutorial video. i'm starting to watch some of your others, now that i have MVS running with your help, on my windows 7 machine. one thing that i've noticed, you show how to download the hercules emulator "standalone". as near as i can tell, this is not needed, as the TK4- software bundles hercules with it, so you don't need to add it to the path etc ... to get TK4- to run.
After select 3 and the g to go graphics I did NOT understand what you used to switch between there. What key did you press to switch betwen the graphic then back to menu?
I echo the compliments excellent videos! It really helped me get up and running tk4 and compiling COBOL on MVS. (with the vintage1970's compiler as you mentioned). I am having trouble defining Indexed datasets as compared to multiple examples in various COBOL guides. The following config works but if I comment out ACTUAL KEY IS ACT-KEY and un-comment RECORD KEY is VENDOR-NUMBER it crashes with code 0C4. Do you know of an example in this environment where the RECORD KEY IS clause works? ENVIRONMENT DIVISION. CONFIGURATION SECTION. SOURCE-COMPUTER. IBM-360. OBJECT-COMPUTER. IBM-360. SPECIAL-NAMES. CONSOLE IS CNSL. INPUT-OUTPUT SECTION. FILE-CONTROL. SELECT VENDOR-FILE ASSIGN TO DA-2302-D-VEND ORGANIZATION DIRECT ACCESS IS RANDOM. ACTUAL KEY IS ACT-KEY. * NOMINAL KEY IS VEND-NUMBER. * RECORD KEY IS VENDOR-NUMBER. DATA DIVISION. FILE SECTION. FD VENDOR-FILE RECORDING MODE IS F RECORD CONTAINS 172 CHARACTERS LABEL RECORDS ARE STANDARD. 01 VENDOR-RECORD. 05 VENDOR-NUMBER PIC 9(5). 05 VENDOR-NAME PIC X(30). 05 VENDOR-ADDRESS-1 PIC X(30). 05 VENDOR-ADDRESS-2 PIC X(30). 05 VENDOR-CITY PIC X(20). 05 VENDOR-STATE PIC X(2). 05 VENDOR-ZIP PIC X(10). 05 VENDOR-CONTACT PIC X(30). 05 VENDOR-PHONE PIC X(15). WORKING-STORAGE SECTION. 01 VEND-RECORD. 05 VEND-NUMBER PIC 9(5) VALUE 12345. 05 VEND-NAME PIC X(30) VALUE 'SNOKY SALES'. 05 VEND-ADDRESS-1 PIC X(30) VALUE '345 MUK ST.'. 05 VEND-ADDRESS-2 PIC X(30) VALUE 'SUITE3'. 05 VEND-CITY PIC X(20) VALUE 'PORTLAND'. 05 VEND-STATE PIC X(2) VALUE 'OR'. 05 VEND-ZIP PIC X(10) VALUE '12345-7890'. 05 VEND-CONTACT PIC X(30) VALUE 'VENDOR CONTACT'. 05 VEND-PHONE PIC X(15) VALUE '(123) 456-7890'. 01 ACT-KEY. 02 TRACK-ID PIC S9(5) COMP SYNC. 02 REC-ID PIC X(8).
Hy! What is MVS 3.8? Was it the System/370 operating system? I want to play with the System/370 operating system but I dont know what it was (I am only 35 years old) I just know that it was MVS but I dont know what version of it exactly and wikipedia didnt help me.
Hello, in whoich way I ran IDCAMS define cluster, I got "IDC3009I ** VSAM CATALOG RETURN CODE IS 248 - REASON CODE IS IGG0CLBX-0 IDC3003I FUNCTION TERMINATED. CONDITION CODE IS 12 " or better which volume I must use for it?
@moshix Was there a reason that you installed Hercules first, but then installed and ran TK4- (which included Hercules) as I couldn't see you use the first Hercules again? Or did I miss something? Just wondering...
i tried to follow your example of doing a copy, but i wanted to copy the prime number cobol example, into a new partitioned dataset under the 'herc03' user, so i could play around with the source code and stuff within a different dataset. when i try to do the copy, i get "data set not cataloged". i'm probably way out in left field, since i know absolutely nothing about mvs. is there an easy answer to what that might mean ?
oh wow, I mean wow. I watched this like watching a movie. If learn on this emulator, will Ibe able of work on the real thing? I know I can run COBOL, Is there a C++ compiler we can used? I subscribed and I'm going to watch all your videos. Thanks.
Yes if you learn on this then you will immediately find your way around a modern mainframe. There is no C++ because it didn’t exist yet when MVS 3:8 came out. But there are 2 good C compilers.
I'm 71 and left the mainframe world at 47 after 25 years of living and breathing assembler language programming and system mods. I MISS IT!! I know a lot has changed but this will be a great way of getting back in if just for fun. Great video. Can't wait to get the system up and running. I'm sure I'll be watching many more of your good work. Ron Kaminski - Prescott Valley, AZ.
Thank you sir. Assembler is what I love to program in, as well
What's the best company to apply for in Arizona. I use to be in tape management and working with as400 . But it's been 20years
Like Mr. Kaminski I started back in Jan. 1967 using assembler on a 360 model 30. It had 32k of memory and 3 2411 disk drives. And who could ever forget that screaming 1403 printer. I spent 37 years with those lovely mainframes. Ended up as system programmer on a 4381. Then into PC networks, web servers, etc. I am now 76 and Hercules and
3.8 are running on my PC. What a ride it has been!
Excelente
Can't emphasize how important these videos by moshix are. Man you are awesome. I was going to start an internship for the summer but due to nCovid-19 my internship got delayed so i asked my manager is there anything i should learn while staying at home and she said learn COBOL, CICS and learn about mainframes. EVERYTHING is on your channel. Meticulous. Your teaching style, a little bit history of mainframes, languages , compiler reactions, everything you teach man i found SUPER important. Again Thank you very much for your hard work. Salute!
Thank you !
Add JCL and TSO CLISTS.
Make sure you head over to ibm master the mainframe challenge. They have some guided tour on ipsf and cobol stuff too. They give access to a mainframe to do some guided challenges. Also this is a bit late but Pluralsight was offering the month of April for free, they have one video course on cobol and getting around zOS. So between this channel and such, should be on a good path if you want to go do these things
@@grinsystem Sure thing. Thanks
The fact that you not only showed how to set everything up, but also taught us about the fundamentals and everything important!! Thanks a ton for this, I just started working with mainframes and was wondering how i could practice without messing with ibm's actual systems hahaha
Thank you and welcome to the mainframer community. Join our discord !
@@moshixmainframechannel Could you send your link again? the one in description is expired
discord.gg/eyRjj4t
I love your videos. I love big iron. I worked for IBM from 1967 to 2005. I started as a mainframe hardware guy. Later I became an MVS program support rep. I finished my career as a UNIX and networking specialist. Rock on!
Oh wow! Would have loved to watch you working on the hardware. And MVS support must have been a great job! Envious ! Thanks for watching .
Congratulation Moshix ... Long Live to MVS 3.8 ... IBM Legacies operating systems are safelive table for the future
Thank you !
Folks: this video is five years old, it may be a little out of date, but everything discussed in it can be found online somewhere. I have this running on my Ubuntu box just fine and am enjoying it just fine. Thank you, Moshix, for all your vids! 😊
Exactly. Thanks
@@moshixmainframechannel could you please check previous comments and help me resolving one problem : I am facing an issue "BSPPILOT NOT ACTIVE"
@@deepakmishra87join our discord channel for support. RUclips is not a good medium for support.
@@moshixmainframechannel done !
Well I loaded and ran it on my windows 8.1 box. Worked exactly like the tutorial. Thanks. Next, Load it on my linux boxes....
THanks ! I have been wanting to run Hercules for years now, but was too much time and issues. This was so easy. (mainframer since 1975) Mickey
This brought back memories as I was a CICS and MVS Systems Programmer! Crazy that there is a big demand for COBOL programmers right now!
What years were you active ?
@@moshixmainframechannel It was the late 80's. I started out as a COBOL application developer and then migrated over to the Systems Programming group. I liked CICS more than MVS. Seeing u run IDCAMS and recognizing those VSAM file definitions brought back a flood of memories. And I don't know how many times I used =3.8 in ISPF! lol
@@moshixmainframechannel I still remember the salmon colored 370 assembler instruction set booklet. :-)
Nice. I started in the early 80s
@@joxerlee1 I still have mine. System/370 Reference Summary. GX20-1850-2 Third Edition 1974.
Thanks ... I took 5 hours to complete just this 1 hour video .. generally i watch videos at x1.5 but with this sensitive video i used speed x0.5 and pause lots of time... back by 20 sec, 10 sec several times... finally fully watched and installed successfully, thanks... :) its 3:46am in the night now... good night..
Cool
Man, talk about a trip down memory lane. I was just a teenager when I started working at a bank’s data center running System/370. I ended up transitioning to the micro world, so never got around to programming on a mainframe. I spent many a weekend, however, poking around TSO trying to understand this beast.
Fun stuff, isn’t it !
I was always awed by the CICS SPIE and STAE startup messages. I thought that was so cool. I did end up doing a stint as a DB2 DBA fifteen years later, so that made my 16 year old self happy.
STAE AND SPIE are some
Of the most amazing things about MVS along with GTF
Thank you for the awesome crash course and walking down the history. Well, now we know who is your real love. spending your valentine's day with MVS :)
CBT was Connecticut Bank and Trust. A systems programmer created a bunch of cool utilities. I still have a 3490 tape cartridge somewhere.
El Banco de la Nación, El Banco de Crédito y el BBVA, utilizan mainframes, con terminales 3270 , bajo MVS 4381
This is great stuff! Over the years I've seen mostly hardware-based products that allowed a "personal MVS" to exist, but never got to play with any. This looks like a great way to see how much one has forgotten or never learned about big iron. I've collected my share of emulator software over the years, and this seems to be more polished than most. Thanks for showing it to us!
Thanks !
ETHZ->Zürich
EPFL->Lausanne
Great Video!
Greetings from Switzerland
I see
I'm so happy that I found this channel. I'm really interested in computer history and old systems. Digging in slowly and had a great success today running it on my Linux system. I like the old ways computers were used to. But also enjoy watching your videos :D. Keep it going, thank you!
Thank you !
Wow, I can't believe I'm just seeing this one. Great presentation. First time, I've seen Hercules in operation. Yeah, though it would have been nice, as per for the 3390 drives, to have been of the mod-3's (2GB+). Though, I did noticed that's such old version of Cobol (OS Cobol), which predates any of the versions of Cobol that I used during my career. Yeah, I figured it's about licensing issues. Interesting, watching the system come up, remains me, this is the view that only the operators and system programmers see, that us TSO users don't see.
Worked like a charm
Great !!
Very clear explanation. TY! Step @ 12:12 not needed. A personal path setting is enough. @24:14 editing a config file should be done in a text editor (ie notepad, from the creators of edlin) not a word editor (wordpad or word). @33:36 actually 18.045 is telling you current date: year (20)18 and day number 45: 14 feb
Thank you
@@moshixmainframechannel Nice to have this "monster" up and running on my own hardware now! Was writing PL/I on TSO/ROSCOE using IMS/DB2 in the 80's for Dutch Airline industry. Been strugling with Hercules the last few years but was not able to run it properly. So TY again. looking forward to study more videos from you. I still have some private PL/I code i would like to run.
thanks for the great video, my company wants me to change stuff on the mainframe and pull data for business intelligence purposes, but nobody else around the office seems to know anything about it, so this is super helpful, RFE seems pretty similar to the ISPF environment we have at work
Learning stuff is so much fun, isnt it ?
@@moshixmainframechannel Definitely, that's the best part of my job :)
Old memories revived ! MVS rules!
Indeed
DASD stands for Direct ACCESS Storage Device 26:46.
16 MB sounds huge. The IBM System/3 10 that I started in had a whole 24 KB of ferrite core memory. The OS consumed 4K, leaving 20K for the single user task. Yes, it was a batch machine.
Excellent Demo thank for your time and explanation. With this presentación I get a gratefully remember and mind activity as system programmer for IBM
Just thought I'd add my first foray into the mainframe world was in 1969 on a 360 model 20 that'd just switched from a Card Operating System to a Disk Operating System with one 1403 printer, one 2314 disk drive and 12K (that's right 'K') of memory. Ron Kaminski
The golden age of computing
Ron, I hope to get mine running when we return to PV AZ late November. We are close to Dewey.
Thanks for this clear introduction!
Love it, love it, love it! Thank you so much for this delightful video tutorial. Makes my ear lobes tingle with delight! Thank you again!
You’re welcome! Stick around
Wohoo :-) The second part of the video was exactly what I was looking for! Thanks a lot!
I know you were just kidding around so, but by no means are you making a fool of yourself. Mainframes are a very unique world most of us never see or touch, so having someone guide us is immensely helpful. I even like your VMS videos as I do remember them! (Ah DecNET) In some ways, the young ones do need to see this because it shows how the plumbing works -- a lot of magic happens behind the scenes these days.
Oh, and COBOL may be old, but of late, it's paying a lot of bills for people.
Thank you !
Hi Moshix - Its a excellent Video those who really like to learn whether any way to install ISMF & DFHSM in this.
No. ISMF and DFHSM are part of later versions and don’t run on this 24bit operating sustem
Oooh, I think I'm going to have to give this a go. intimidating but certainly logical. Who knows, a year from now I could be writing my own business code for the heck of it! :)
Since you're on Windows, you can 'tail' a file easily with Powershell so you don't have to keep opening it in notepad or similar:
Get-Content prt\prt00e.txt -tail 1000 -wait
assuming you're in the MVS3.8 directory
Thanks !
Thank you , need a refresh after seeing this video a year ago .
Thanks, moshix. Look forward to seeing more of your videos.
Thanks !
It is a Great Tutorial video and the music in the background is wonderful, It brought back beautiful memories. :)
A very nice video. I particularly liked history, observation details, fun facts and insights on performance. Thank you Moshix.
Hi MOSHIX!! I asked the same question to Tom Brennan about v2.00 and here is his answer:
"V2.00 was my attempt at getting true-type fonts to work along with some
other things like REXX as a macro language. But I stopped working on
that version. Right now my latest version is the one on my download
page, V1.27, other than a couple of test V1.28 versions that you might
not want because they are not done yet."
So, I guess that it is not not necessary to mention this v02.00 until it is completed. But, of course, it is up to you.
I keep on installing the tools, then.
Excellent video! I hope you continue with this channel, it is fun and very educational.
Thank you Todd!
Fantastic presentation! I followed this video step by step and installed, tested and validated everything as described ... totally amazing. Thank you for sharing and explaining the key points. I plan to use this HERCULES environment to re-familiarize with BAL and understand more about the IBM architecture. Many thanks, this is a great teaching tool! And yes, mainframes are very much alive, more so than people think.
Thank you
TK4 worked for me. Thanks a lot moshix
This is excellent work. Respect and gratitude. Thanks so much for sharing !!!!
Great Tutorial! I really could have used this when I was first starting out, it would've saved me a lot of time! 🙂
COBOL was trending on Twitter and that's what brought me here. Did you ever get access to COBOL?
I did and I do. Every day
even 2022 its sworking fine and same as follow the steps to executes
use 0100 not 100 spaces as the field is 4 bytes long that is why you got a soc 7
Never had heard of this before - fantastic video - during 1970s was a COBOL, Assembler, Fortran programmer in application software and ended up in system software support. Retired now.
Obviously from your video, this emulator handles COBOL; what about Assembler (including Macro Assembler), and FORTRAN ?
Yes. We have 14 compilers. Fortran H and Fortran G, PLI, two assemblers, pascal, RPG, Simula, C, Basic, GCC, and more
@@moshixmainframechannel thanks - going to be looking into this.
I WORKED WTIH MAINFRAME SINCE 1978 WITH COBOL, PL.I, ASSEMBLER AND RPG II.
Thus the ALL CAPS 😀
Muchas gracias por el video, el mejor!! Thanks 🇲🇽
thank you SOOOOOO much for the video!!!!
Thanks A Lot brother... Love from India 🇮🇳
Mr. moshix thak you very much for your contribution. i suscribed to your channel.
Thank you !
I've found this video a really useful entry to the mainframe world. I now have TK4- running permanently on one of my Linux boxes. My tip is to replace the Hercules version bundled with TK4- with your own build of Hercules 4.x "Hyperion" from the repo on GitHub. The Hyperion code base seems to have some big performance improvements. You also get the benefit of the newer GCC compiler optimisation and - if you are so inclined - you can engineer a build that targets your specific CPU instruction set level. All in all, my peak MIPS is 5+ times faster than with the stock Hercules.
But I do have a mainframe noob question that I really hope somebody might help me with. This is driving me nuts! When I enter a command at the TSO prompt and mess something up, I can't get back to the READY prompt. It just keeps saying "REENTER+ -". From what I read online, the PA1 key is supposed to break out of a command but for me PA1 just causes TSO to display what looks like a "|" (vertical bar, pipe, whatever) prompt. Pressing at that prompt just takes me back to "REENTER+ -". When this happens, my only workaround is to stop and restart TSO at the MVS console. Help!
When you get the vertical pipe press PA1 again then type quit
@@moshixmainframechannel Thanks, but I'm afraid that makes no difference. I get the pipe, I press PA1 again, type QUIT, press and it goes right back to where I was. I must have spent hours over the last few days trying to figure this out. AAArrrggghh!
Write END
Thanks for the video very informative!
I'm in shock remembering one of my job nightmares. I saw that editor in 1999 while working in a bank, and being a software developer coming from the DOS and Windows world I was petrified when my boss started to show me that arcane editor (I remember the "full reader" and "member" things, I was horrified on how much work/typing its was required to edit a simple file!, prior I believed that Unix's "vi" was the worst editor I've seen!). Fortunately, despite knowing COBOL (I learned the RM-COBOL for PC, so it was easy using the *advanced* editors in DOS like QEdit), I wasn't assigned to create COBOL and JCL programs in the mainframe and PowerBuilder + Sybase stored procedures saved me. Ufff!
What a freaky horror story...
Yes, the Semware editor "QEdit", which was better than that integrated in Turbo-Pascal or Turbo-C++. Any of those editors were intuitive to use and didn't require training plus a command sheet in the wall.
moshix in the vista TN3270 Session A. Local host is not an option when I open it up to connect. I tried to input my own IP address with no luck. What could be my issue that I need to correct to connect
It’s not an option pre-configured. You have to type in localhost yourself and then make sure to give port 3270.
moshix so just type the words local host or do I need some type of IP address?
you could change the parm for cob step to produce assembler listing of compiled code ... i think so the specific option is list ... by default it is nolist ... you can then go to assembler listing and locate the code generated for the input statement [oops not input statement but first arithmetic statement that uses input field] and you will realize that 0c7 error is happening because it is attempting to pack input number in preparation to do arithmetic ... input number is in character format and that where i think it is failing because of trailing space characters in input field ... pack takes a number of characters and produce packed decimal format ... this will be converted to fullword binary format by cvb ... it will fail executing pack because there are trailing space characters ... one good way to learn assembler is to use list compiler option to produce assembler code generated by compiler
I could
I don't know if it's changed but DMAP produced a Data Division map (assembler data names), and PMAP produced a Procedure Division map (assembler code).
@ronkaminski8879 hasn’t changed. Thanks
Awesome video! Thank you for the information as it is greatly appreciated! One suggestion, please dump the background music.
Actually, on 58:50 most likely didn't change because you kept that selection mark, so windows just freezes the window until you remove that selection mark xD
By the way, i'm going to be very fun to experiment with it, at least starting with C :)
Use Notepad++ instead of Notepad when working with the spooled print files - it automatically tails them.
Thanks. I almost never use Windows anyway
You are really awesome
No you are ! Thanks
I had a chance to go to a trade school way back to learn COBOL. I chose being in band. I have since gotten three degrees but all for the wrong reason, and all to please someone else. I wish I had listened to that person in the first place and went with that trade school. In recent years I have gravitated to the old languages and tech, maybe as a lament for older times, or because I think this is where they got it right. I hate smart devices. The internet has made the world worse in more ways than better. I still think there is a future in mainframes and COBOL, and that is what I choose to study now. On my own. Why not? lol
Good for you! Good luck !
Legacy is money Bro… listen me
You sir, are AWESOME!!!!
Great value
This is such a well-made and well-explained video! Thank you!
I've acquired an apparently working IBM 3278 Mod 2 terminal that I would love to somehow connect to Hercules / MVS 3.8 as the system console. I know it's been done because I've seen pictures of it here and there on the web, but there are no details provided. Moshix, or anyone else, can you help me get started with this project, with any helpful links? I know an IBM 3274 controller or similar is involved, but the networking part escapes me.
I was an IBM mainframe programmer for 30 years on DOS/VSE, VM, and MVS machines, and around 2003 I transitioned into Windows systems and network support as a career. I have never lost my love for IBM mainframes, though.
It's easy to to connect a 3278 to Hercules as the console if you have a 3274-R Ethernet (not token ring) establishment controller. You also need the right firmware floppy revision. Then it becomes feasible and it has been done before indeed
Thank you. Now to find a controller that still works! Are you talking about a 3174-11R? I don't know of any 3274 models with an "R" in it. I could try to contact someone at corestore.org that has had some pictures of this setup in the past.
Yes that’s the one
Thank you very much , very good vidéo.
Awesome Video. you made my day..
Thanks
ABEND S0C7 is a data excpetion - probably due to the trailing blank on the input statement.
Yes but what is a SOC4? To keep my feet warm?
@111bobgato yes
S0C4 is an addressing exception. Your program tried to enter some other address space. Happens most often searching or building a data table (matrix).
@@ronkaminski8879 thanks !
Great tutorial - Thank You !
This video was great and helped me get my system running. I have to get used to the editor not being ISPF. Then I want to see how much COBOL and REXX I can run. Have you checked out KICKS and is there something similar to DB2?
I can see CP00 and CP01 fully loaded together when computing prime numbers up to 5 millions (2 seconds runtime) :D
That's weird. Only one CPU should be very busy because the program is not multi-threaded.
Hi Moshix, great video. I follwed it and all worked as expected (under Ubuntu).
Do you have any idea why the terminal screen of Hercules is not updated as under Windows? Register contents are 0 most of the time and I could not adjust screen refresh rate.
For someone like me with a lot of experience (programming and administration) outside the mainframe world, can you suggest an order to view your videos?
Thank you!
Not sure why it doesn’t update. Type panrate 50 in the Hercules console. Order: start from M1 and proceed to M173.
Thankyou so much.
This is really a great and very educational at that for us beginners. Anyway is there a way to do all the installation in a macbook? thanks in advance.
Yes macOS is supported
@@moshixmainframechannel Thanks Sir. Hope you don't mind my followup question, Is there any way to integrate z/OS to Hercules? Really appreciate your response.
At 80's I was a student at a university having IBM 4341. I learned pascal and fortran there. But there was something called CMS and we could create, edit, compile and run pascal/fortran files directly without creating jobs. Is CMS an alternative to MVS? Is there any emulator for it? Thanks for the nice video.
CMS is the time sharing environment of VM/370. Lots of videos about VM/370
In this channel. You see CMS there everywhere
Thank you for the wonderful video. Btw, do you also have tutorials on how to incorporate DB2 and CICS on this MVS on windows?
Unfortunately DB2 even version 1 does not run on this MVS and it wouldn't be legal anyway. Same for CICS
@@moshixmainframechannel ok, do you know of any other mainframe system for windows that can incorporate DB2 and CICS? Basically I'm trying to create a mainframe system in windows with cobol, Db2, cics, and jcl that I can use for training purposes only
@@marlonramos3340 yes the microfocus suite
@@moshixmainframechannel thank you for replying. Just want to ask if you have any reference materials or tutorial videos (or reference materials you can recommend) that sets up micro focus suite that includes CICS and DB2 in windows?
AWESOME!!!
Thank you !
What is the phisical block size and how many blocks can store in a track?
Come to our discord channel to ask thee questions please. Much easier there to get help
@moshix, where will i get all your other videos on mainframe, as this video of Hercules is incredible and i wish i knew it before i started on MVS mainframe. Great!!!!!
Thanks. All other videos are right here in this channel. Click subscribe to see them all
Not sure what's going on but as soon as Hercules starts the processors stop. The terminal emulator connects but it will not go any further than the tk4 initial panel
Hmmm never seen that.
Amazing post thanks for share with us...
Thank you !
My TI Direta channel has some shorts about mainframes, ISPF, TSO, JCL COBOL, DB2 etc.
Cool. URL ??
Hello Moshix, very good vidéo!! For my new job, I need to get familiar with z/OS. Do you have the same vidéo for z/OS?
Or is it OK to learn with TK4 because there are small différences with z/OS?
Very similar. Learn MVS and you are at home in z/OS
I did not find v200 on Tom Brennan's site. The latest one is v1.27
S0C7 results usually when no numeric data gets involved with Comp-3 data.
non numeric data
@@cact25 I can't see the COBOL text, but clearly the input 100 is only 3 digits and the COBOL program is expecting four. IBM COBOL does NOT treat blank as a zero, and I doubt if the code processing the input bothered to test the validity of the input as numeric Try entering 0100, and I think you'll find it works!.
Absolutely correct
This is great. The windows is much longer than the linux video.... after download here, start at 23:10 ?
Sure
can you create a short video about how to compile and execute cobol program using emulator
There is a video about that already
@@moshixmainframechannel can you post that video link
when using MVS emulator i am unable to go back to other screens from spool... is there any other options available? ... not able to use SWAPBAR ON option to access multiple screens
@@RajeshPudi18 PF9
@@moshixmainframechannel i did , but screen not going to other screens, have to press PF3 to go back
Thank you Moshix for this awesome resource.
I can modify SYS2.JCLLIB(PRIMCOB1) and run it successfully. But the compiler/TK-4 invariably gives condition code 12 when I save & submit a "Hello World" Cobol program created in my own file. The compiler (or TK-4) complains about one or more of the DD statements in the JCL. I've made sure I'm typing the JCL DD statements exactly as they are in dataset SYS2.JCLLIB(PRIMCOB1). Is it that the DD statements in the JCL for PRIMCOB1 are not absolute paths?
Per your suggestion I glanced at the user's manual, but it does not provide the kind of knowledge you impart in your videos. Are there any other resources you recommend for us who are new to mainframe programming? My expertise in AS/400 (and back-end systems) isn't helping me expedite my acquaintance with the mainframe realm.
Can you paste your job here and I look at it ?
@@moshixmainframechannel Thank you kindly. Here it is:
000001 //HELOWRLD JOB (COBOL),'HI',CLASS=A,MSGCLASS=A,MSGLEVEL=(1,1)
000002 //HELOEXEC EXEC COBUCG
000003 //COB.SYSPUNCH DD DUMMY
000004 //COB.SYSIN DD *
000005 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
000006 PROGRAM-ID. EXCBLPGM.
000007 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
000008 DISPLAY 'HELLO'.
000009 STOP RUN.
000010 /*
000011 //COB.SYSLIB DD DSNAME=SYS1.COBLIB,DISP=SHR
000012 //GO.SYSOUT DD SYSOUT=*,DCB=(RECFM=FBA,LRECL=161,BLKSIZE=16100)
000013 //
there is a video on jcl ... search words: *jcl mainframe tutorial*
This was a great video for getting the MVS 3.8J system up and running!
I have not been able to find an old VTAM command reference. Anybody know what VTAM display commands were available at that level?
45:15 how do you scroll through datasets?
nvm im stoopid
Clear - in windows it’s CLS ;)
Got to know. Never knew.
great apart from the background music
Excellent demo. My Hercules works fine. But have you got a link for a new z/OS image, like z/OS 2.1, 2.2 (2.3)?
Yes, I do!
Http://www.ibm.com
@@moshixmainframechannel not able to find.Could you pls provide the link ?
I will look for it
thanks much for the tutorial video. i'm starting to watch some of your others, now that i have MVS running with your help, on my windows 7 machine. one thing that i've noticed, you show how to download the hercules emulator "standalone". as near as i can tell, this is not needed, as the TK4- software bundles hercules with it, so you don't need to add it to the path etc ... to get TK4- to run.
I also explain how to install Hercules in case people want to try other mainframe operating systems like VM/370, DOS/VSE etc
Thanks!
After select 3 and the g to go graphics I did NOT understand what you used to switch between there. What key did you press to switch betwen the graphic then back to menu?
F3
I echo the compliments excellent videos! It really helped me get up and running tk4 and compiling COBOL on MVS. (with the vintage1970's compiler as you mentioned). I am having trouble defining Indexed datasets as compared to multiple examples in various COBOL guides. The following config works but if I comment out ACTUAL KEY IS ACT-KEY and un-comment RECORD KEY is VENDOR-NUMBER it crashes with code 0C4. Do you know of an example in this environment where the RECORD KEY IS clause works?
ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
CONFIGURATION SECTION.
SOURCE-COMPUTER. IBM-360.
OBJECT-COMPUTER. IBM-360.
SPECIAL-NAMES.
CONSOLE IS CNSL.
INPUT-OUTPUT SECTION.
FILE-CONTROL.
SELECT VENDOR-FILE
ASSIGN TO DA-2302-D-VEND
ORGANIZATION DIRECT
ACCESS IS RANDOM.
ACTUAL KEY IS ACT-KEY.
* NOMINAL KEY IS VEND-NUMBER.
* RECORD KEY IS VENDOR-NUMBER.
DATA DIVISION.
FILE SECTION.
FD VENDOR-FILE
RECORDING MODE IS F
RECORD CONTAINS 172 CHARACTERS
LABEL RECORDS ARE STANDARD.
01 VENDOR-RECORD.
05 VENDOR-NUMBER PIC 9(5).
05 VENDOR-NAME PIC X(30).
05 VENDOR-ADDRESS-1 PIC X(30).
05 VENDOR-ADDRESS-2 PIC X(30).
05 VENDOR-CITY PIC X(20).
05 VENDOR-STATE PIC X(2).
05 VENDOR-ZIP PIC X(10).
05 VENDOR-CONTACT PIC X(30).
05 VENDOR-PHONE PIC X(15).
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 VEND-RECORD.
05 VEND-NUMBER PIC 9(5) VALUE 12345.
05 VEND-NAME PIC X(30) VALUE 'SNOKY SALES'.
05 VEND-ADDRESS-1 PIC X(30) VALUE '345 MUK ST.'.
05 VEND-ADDRESS-2 PIC X(30) VALUE 'SUITE3'.
05 VEND-CITY PIC X(20) VALUE 'PORTLAND'.
05 VEND-STATE PIC X(2) VALUE 'OR'.
05 VEND-ZIP PIC X(10) VALUE '12345-7890'.
05 VEND-CONTACT PIC X(30) VALUE 'VENDOR CONTACT'.
05 VEND-PHONE PIC X(15) VALUE '(123) 456-7890'.
01 ACT-KEY.
02 TRACK-ID PIC S9(5) COMP SYNC.
02 REC-ID PIC X(8).
Hy! What is MVS 3.8? Was it the System/370 operating system? I want to play with the System/370 operating system but I dont know what it was (I am only 35 years old) I just know that it was MVS but I dont know what version of it exactly and wikipedia didnt help me.
System /370 is the hardware architecture. MVS 3.8 is the operating system for S/370. One of them
Hello, in whoich way I ran IDCAMS define cluster, I got "IDC3009I ** VSAM CATALOG RETURN CODE IS 248 - REASON CODE IS IGG0CLBX-0
IDC3003I FUNCTION TERMINATED. CONDITION CODE IS 12 "
or better which volume I must use for it?
ruclips.net/video/b4eqoypfF1A/видео.html
@moshix Was there a reason that you installed Hercules first, but then installed and ran TK4- (which included Hercules) as I couldn't see you use the first Hercules again? Or did I miss something? Just wondering...
Yes I mentioned it in the video. It can be useful to run things like VM/370 and DOS/VSE
i tried to follow your example of doing a copy, but i wanted to copy the prime number cobol example, into a new partitioned dataset under the 'herc03' user, so i could play around with the source code and stuff within a different dataset. when i try to do the copy, i get "data set not cataloged". i'm probably way out in left field, since i know absolutely nothing about mvs. is there an easy answer to what that might mean ?
hah ! i happened to start watching a different video, and saw someone asked the same question. i'll try to follow the answer there.
It means one of the dataset names is spelled wrong. Also put quotes around the names.
oh wow, I mean wow. I watched this like watching a movie. If learn on this emulator, will Ibe able of work on the real thing?
I know I can run COBOL, Is there a C++ compiler we can used? I subscribed and I'm going to watch all your videos. Thanks.
Yes if you learn on this then you will immediately find your way around a modern mainframe. There is no C++ because it didn’t exist yet when MVS 3:8 came out. But there are 2 good C compilers.