The Principles of Operation manual is an absolute must for assembly language programming. ?You simply can not program in assembler without it.
At the moment you are struggling with how to get the assembler to work and use macros from someone else to get the assembler to create a program.
As you start doing more of your own assembler coding the Principles of Operation manual will become more and more valuable.
Because you are working within a DOS partition (where you assemble a program and where it runs), you will be most interested in the sections devoted to General Instructions. ?Don't know what those are? ?That is your reading assignment. ?LOL.
And if you get errors when you try to assemble your program with the various macros, that is not an problem with the assembler or the operating system you are using. ?That means you simply have an issue with the macros. ?The assembler and OS are working as they are supposed to.
That is success! ?Not as much as you hope for, but foundational success.
The bitsavers site that Mike shared with you has an entire folder dedicated to DOS/VS. ?And yes there is a LOT of documentation. ?As you explore DOS/VS you will start to see where each one fits.
Assembler is marvelous. ?That is of course just me speaking.
Have fun,
Harold Grovesteen
On Sat, 2023-06-03 at 10:18 -0400, Mike Stramba wrote:
Andre,
Here are a couple?of sites you may be interested in
Tommy Sprinkle's site is not directly related to dos/vs, but it is very educational in showing how the basics
of an IBM OS can be constructed.
This is a very nicely constructed site, re: how to install / build dos360.
It includes example test programs to print / read-write from dasd, in Assembler, Fortran, Cobol and RPG.
Another interesting site / program, is Harold?Grovesteen's SATK? "bare metal" toolkit:
>But it turns out, that those examples are useless, because they use macros of PC/370 program and those macros not present in IBM OS's. How to import them, i don't know.
I wouldn't say the examples are useless.? It's only the macros that might need editing.
Dave Wade, wrote in your other thread in Herc390, that you can cut/paste the "body" of those macros
into your example code.
If you haven't already downloaded it,? I highly recommend that you download the Principles of Operation
from Bitsavers.org :?
Read up on the I/O instructions, and also see Tommy Sprinkle's site for more explanation on how the I/O
system works.
You can even run small programs directly in Hercules, by using the 'r' (display or alter real storage), 'restart',
step, psw hercules commands.
Mike
Hello Everyone,
My name is Andre, and i am new ibmuser. All my life i thought that Altair 8800 was the "first" computer, but then i have learned about mainframes. :)
My interest grew stronger and stronger, and then i found moshix channel at YouTube. That was the beginning of my journey.
Well, while other people try to run most recent operating systems, i was really interested in ancient ones.Tried UNIXv7, Multics and even CTSS.
But for me they are not so complicated as IBM OS/360. It is like OS from other dimension, from planet Nibiru.
Some companies do not release any good documentation, but IBM is not one of them, they release TOO MUCH, and their documentation is really hard to read or understand.
Maybe it was done intentionally, so people would be forced to buy support, i don't know.
So why DOS/VS? For me it is because this OS is closest to DOS360, and run perfectly on Hercules.
What is my goal? To write my own assembler program(not just hello world, but something more advanced) and run it successfully on DOS/VS. Plus points if it also would run on DOS/360.
What is my problem? Every time i find a good book about assembler, it seems that i found a book for wrong type of assembler. Nothing works. I am truly fascinated by programmers of that period.
Recently i started to read magnificent book by Bill Qualls "Mainframe Assembler Programming". He gives a lot of code examples and recommends to run them on PC/370 by Don Higgins.
But it turns out, that those examples are useless, because they use macros of PC/370 program and those macros not present in IBM OS's. How to import them, i don't know.
Also, i have big problem with JCL. It seems that for every type of OS there is different syntax for JCL. And lots of sites cover JCL for latest z/OS, not for DOS/VS.
I am looking for help here, only because i feel that i am stuck.
Maybe there is someone, who also read Bill Qualls book and was able to run his examples on Hercules.
Or maybe someone would recommend other good assembly book, with examples that would work on DOS/VS.
Or maybe someone would share with me universal JCL for DOS/VS that should run almost any intermediate assembly program.
Any help are welcomed.
Best wishes,
Andre
