Andre -

?

Before you try to leap to the mainframe, I would suggest that you first follow this:?

?

This uses the newer z390 package by Don Higgins.

?

Once you are comfortable with those examples and?have them working on your machine, then we can help you leap to the mainframe and DOS/VS.

?

Joe

?

?

On Sat, Jun 3, 2023 at 8:40?AM Andre <procritic@...> wrote:

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

?

?

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

On Sat, Jun 3, 2023 at 9:40?AM Andre <procritic@...> wrote:

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

?

?

I would also suggest that you download and run the VMr6 package from

?

The VM forum is here :

/g/h390-vm

?

Vm, is the easiest IBM os to get up and running and use.

?

It has an interactive "user-console"? (virtual machine),? and the commands to list, edit, copy files, are

very similar to msdos?/ unix.

?

The "community" edition link I posted, also has a full screen editor, and other "niceties" added on (online help for one), that the original vmR6 didn't have.

?

To assemble and run a "Hello World" program you would just use the A (assemble command) on your

?

HELLO ASSEMBLE? file.

?

HELLO? ? CSECT ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? LR ?12,15 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? USING HELLO,12 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? WRTERM 'HELLO FROM ASM',14 ?
? ?? ? BR 14 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? END? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

?

**** You need to add a? line to your PROFILE EXEC : to access the macro library that contains the WRTERM

macro.

GLOBAL MACLIB CMSLIB

?

Then assuming no assembly errors,? you would issue :??

LOAD HELLO

STA

Execution begins...
HELLO FROM ASM? ? ?

?

It is even possible to setup?a dosvs "virtual machine" to run dosvs? "inside"? vm.

?

Actually, the "VM Directory" entry for the dosvs?virtual machine is already setup,

you just need to download the dos dasd's?

?

?

?

If you don't already have a 3270 emulator, I would highly recommend Tom Brennan's Vista :

?

It's a great program, and priced at a ridiculously low price of $30 usd.

You can download a 30 day trial.

?

Mike

On Sat, Jun 3, 2023 at 10:18?AM Mike Stramba <mikestramba@...> 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

On Sat, Jun 3, 2023 at 9:40?AM Andre <procritic@...> wrote:

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

?

?

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

On Sat, Jun 3, 2023 at 9:40?AM Andre <procritic@...> wrote:

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

As an operator I learnt assembler on a 370/138 on dos/vs after reading Sharon K Tuggle’s Assembler Language Programming book. On night shifts I would squeeze in a few programs in BG.?

To drive it all home I wrote a version of Star Trek after playing a basic version on a Rank Xerox Sigma 9 on a previous contract.

Anyway, the program output was on the system console and caused no end of problems the next day when the (real) programmers couldn’t find their error messages because of a full console log.

the boss came to me the next day and I thought I was for the chop, but instead they offered me the vacant Systems Programmer job, which of course I readily accepted!

?

Hi Steve!

This is so cool! Do you have any more stories about working on 370? What type of programs usually was batched through the day? Business stuff? Scientific?
I know that ENIAC was used to compute trajectories for artillery. UNIVAC helped with census and also tried to forecast weather and election results.
After that a lot of Business companies adopted computers for calculating employee wages and stock lists.

This is ok, but i want to know how much time would it take to compute one of this tasks, how often they used to appear? Why night shifts existed?

Best wishes,
Andre

On Sat, Jun 3, 2023 at 10:15 PM, Steve Shepherd wrote:

As an operator I learnt assembler on a 370/138 on dos/vs after reading Sharon K Tuggle’s Assembler Language Programming book. On night shifts I would squeeze in a few programs in BG.?

To drive it all home I wrote a version of Star Trek after playing a basic version on a Rank Xerox Sigma 9 on a previous contract.

Anyway, the program output was on the system console and caused no end of problems the next day when the (real) programmers couldn’t find their error messages because of a full console log.

the boss came to me the next day and I thought I was for the chop, but instead they offered me the vacant Systems Programmer job, which of course I readily accepted!

Based on your question#s :

Evening and night shift (of 8 hours) was because the early mainframes and that included as far as I was involved in IBM 1401, 360 and early 370s, ICL 1900's (1500 as well but they were totally Magnetic tape based). That said so was 1401 and many 360/370 as hard disks was expensive when they became available and very small in capacity i.,e from 80 - 300 MB or there about.

For the later system above i.e. 360/370 that had terminal user running CICS they mostly had to have other tasks to support them that where all Batch processes and these run during the quiet periods such as for one hour lunch time (may be) and after 18:00 to 08:30 plus all of the weekends.? Now programmers also submitted compile and basic testing and this was done during the day but mostly over night and the w/e and some programmers came in during the W/E and in my case to use the card punch to produce a source deck to input to the system for a compile but usually for fixes to the code that had to be then inserted into the original source decks. One reason for having to do it yourself was the punch room people could be very busy punching data card packs for input to the system so did not have a lot of time for doing programs.
Here the programmers wrote the source code on to forms that had the layout of a Cobol program with around 25 lines per page.

The rest of the evening and nights was processing the normal business workloads that was created during the day such as stock updates, payroll, other accounting processes among many others.
While the m/f was based on a slow CPU when using hard drives were a lot quicker than say a personal computer that was available from around 1977-8 (floppy disk based mostly but the one's with the early Winchester (early hard drives and 8 inches wide and a lot longer and were heavy) drives was not a lot faster.

The benefit of mainframes has always been there much faster processing with modern hard drives because that can access multiple drives where each had there own data bus -. A PC has only one and that is used for all data flows so compared very slow.

Remember a m/f is running many programs at once - (OK, may be time slicing) but a great deal more than the average micro based computer.

I have two desktops and both have multi core processors where on one is is 8 core in one chip (AMD) and the other, 2 XEON CPUs with 4 cores each and with the right O/S they do bash work though and not quicker than the older m/f's as mentioned above.

Bye the bye one of mine also had mag tapes (and cartridges) and they really slowed the system down so after a couple of years I replaced the lot with WD Black hard drives that are hot swappable.

Small point I came into computing around 1963 and obtained my first Micros around 1978 with the faster one;s around 1982 (Cromemco was one brand) but I was running the first company in Europe dealing in micros from 1975-6 selling all over the world - outside the USA and even then sometimes in despite some products (software including DOS, CPM, MPM, *nix, books, magazines and hardware came from the USA . ? ?

My first job in computing in 1963 was for 6 - 9 months as an operator on a 40 hour week earning 4 pounds per hour but if I worked the weekends on a 12 hour shift the rate doubled and I could take the rest of the next week off.
Some time the w/e was light so I would do some programming such as automating the systems IPL so it only needed one switch press and along with a small card desk and the 1401 system as up and running - otherwise you had to enter a lot of machine code then execute it to do the same.? That was shown to the boss who invited me to be a programmer and a considerable higher salary :)

I still did some operating though and got paid for it at my new rate :)

Oh boy - those where they days = when men where men and computers . . . .


On 03/06/2023 21:19, Andre wrote:

Hi Steve!

This is so cool! Do you have any more stories about working on 370? What type of programs usually was batched through the day? Business stuff? Scientific?
I know that ENIAC was used to compute trajectories for artillery. UNIVAC helped with census and also tried to forecast weather and election results.
After that a lot of Business companies adopted computers for calculating employee wages and stock lists.

This is ok, but i want to know how much time would it take to compute one of this tasks, how often they used to appear? Why night shifts existed?

Best wishes,
Andre

On Sat, Jun 3, 2023 at 10:15 PM, Steve Shepherd wrote:

As an operator I learnt assembler on a 370/138 on dos/vs after reading Sharon K Tuggle’s Assembler Language Programming book. On night shifts I would squeeze in a few programs in BG.?

To drive it all home I wrote a version of Star Trek after playing a basic version on a Rank Xerox Sigma 9 on a previous contract.

Anyway, the program output was on the system console and caused no end of problems the next day when the (real) programmers couldn’t find their error messages because of a full console log.

the boss came to me the next day and I thought I was for the chop, but instead they offered me the vacant Systems Programmer job, which of course I readily accepted!

Andre asked:? “Why did night shifts exist?”

?

The basic answer is that compared to today’s computers the IBM 360 and 370 computers were quite slow.? You just could not get all of the work done during the day.

?

We had a physics professor that was trying to prove something (What, I don’t know) but he had a Fortran program that would run all night 6 pm to 7:30 am and it did not produce his answer so we had to kill it.

He kept trying to make it more efficient and the same thing would happen every night, it never finished.? Then we tried running it from 6? pm Friday night until 7:30 am Monday morning and it still didn’t complete.

?

So I took on the task of modifying his program to output intermediate results before we killed the program and then be able to read in those intermediate results when we restarted program the next night evening.? So we ran his program every night for about six weeks and he still didn’t get the results he wanted so he finally gave up.? “Those were the days, my friend.”

?

?

/Fran Hensler at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania USA for 52 years?????? mailto:RockFox@...?? ? ?????????????????"Yes, Virginia, there is a Slippery Rock" ?

?

From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Andre
Sent: Saturday, June 3, 2023 4:19 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [H390-DOSVS] Going back to the future and writing programs for mainframes in the process

?

Hi Steve!

This is so cool! Do you have any more stories about working on 370? What type of programs usually was batched through the day? Business stuff? Scientific?
I know that ENIAC was used to compute trajectories for artillery. UNIVAC helped with census and also tried to forecast weather and election results.
After that a lot of Business companies adopted computers for calculating employee wages and stock lists.

This is ok, but i want to know how much time would it take to compute one of this tasks, how often they used to appear? Why night shifts existed?

Best wishes,
Andre

On Sat, Jun 3, 2023 at 10:15 PM, Steve Shepherd wrote:

As an operator I learnt assembler on a 370/138 on dos/vs after reading Sharon K Tuggle’s Assembler Language Programming book. On night shifts I would squeeze in a few programs in BG.?

To drive it all home I wrote a version of Star Trek after playing a basic version on a Rank Xerox Sigma 9 on a previous contract.

Anyway, the program output was on the system console and caused no end of problems the next day when the (real) programmers couldn’t find their error messages because of a full console log.

the boss came to me the next day and I thought I was for the chop, but instead they offered me the vacant Systems Programmer job, which of course I readily accepted!

?

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

?

On Sat, Jun 3, 2023 at 9:40?AM Andre <procritic@...> wrote:

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

?

?

?

?

Hello Vince,

I always thought that even Pentium CPU was much faster than 370 m/fs. Well, i agree, m/f has a lot of disks, but you can attach 4 or more HDDs to your PC also.
For example, i have two SSD(for sys and data), one NVMe(for VM) and one HDD 7200rpm(for archives) attached to my system.

Those terminals you mentioned used modems, right? So when we dial the DOS/VS we emulate modem connection?
They usually was 1052 like printer-keyboards or 3270 displays?

On Sun, Jun 4, 2023 at 01:49 AM, Vince Coen wrote:

Based on your question#s :

Evening and night shift (of 8 hours) was because the early mainframes and that included as far as I was involved in IBM 1401, 360 and early 370s, ICL 1900's (1500 as well but they were totally Magnetic tape based). That said so was 1401 and many 360/370 as hard disks was expensive when they became available and very small in capacity i.,e from 80 - 300 MB or there about.

For the later system above i.e. 360/370 that had terminal user running CICS they mostly had to have other tasks to support them that where all Batch processes and these run during the quiet periods such as for one hour lunch time (may be) and after 18:00 to 08:30 plus all of the weekends.? Now programmers also submitted compile and basic testing and this was done during the day but mostly over night and the w/e and some programmers came in during the W/E and in my case to use the card punch to produce a source deck to input to the system for a compile but usually for fixes to the code that had to be then inserted into the original source decks. One reason for having to do it yourself was the punch room people could be very busy punching data card packs for input to the system so did not have a lot of time for doing programs.
Here the programmers wrote the source code on to forms that had the layout of a Cobol program with around 25 lines per page.

The rest of the evening and nights was processing the normal business workloads that was created during the day such as stock updates, payroll, other accounting processes among many others.
While the m/f was based on a slow CPU when using hard drives were a lot quicker than say a personal computer that was available from around 1977-8 (floppy disk based mostly but the one's with the early Winchester (early hard drives and 8 inches wide and a lot longer and were heavy) drives was not a lot faster.

The benefit of mainframes has always been there much faster processing with modern hard drives because that can access multiple drives where each had there own data bus -. A PC has only one and that is used for all data flows so compared very slow.

Remember a m/f is running many programs at once - (OK, may be time slicing) but a great deal more than the average micro based computer.

I have two desktops and both have multi core processors where on one is is 8 core in one chip (AMD) and the other, 2 XEON CPUs with 4 cores each and with the right O/S they do bash work though and not quicker than the older m/f's as mentioned above.

Bye the bye one of mine also had mag tapes (and cartridges) and they really slowed the system down so after a couple of years I replaced the lot with WD Black hard drives that are hot swappable.

Small point I came into computing around 1963 and obtained my first Micros around 1978 with the faster one;s around 1982 (Cromemco was one brand) but I was running the first company in Europe dealing in micros from 1975-6 selling all over the world - outside the USA and even then sometimes in despite some products (software including DOS, CPM, MPM, *nix, books, magazines and hardware came from the USA . ? ?

My first job in computing in 1963 was for 6 - 9 months as an operator on a 40 hour week earning 4 pounds per hour but if I worked the weekends on a 12 hour shift the rate doubled and I could take the rest of the next week off.
Some time the w/e was light so I would do some programming such as automating the systems IPL so it only needed one switch press and along with a small card desk and the 1401 system as up and running - otherwise you had to enter a lot of machine code then execute it to do the same.? That was shown to the boss who invited me to be a programmer and a considerable higher salary :)

I still did some operating though and got paid for it at my new rate :)

Oh boy - those where they days = when men where men and computers . . . .


On 03/06/2023 21:19, Andre wrote:

Hi Steve!

This is so cool! Do you have any more stories about working on 370? What type of programs usually was batched through the day? Business stuff? Scientific?
I know that ENIAC was used to compute trajectories for artillery. UNIVAC helped with census and also tried to forecast weather and election results.
After that a lot of Business companies adopted computers for calculating employee wages and stock lists.

This is ok, but i want to know how much time would it take to compute one of this tasks, how often they used to appear? Why night shifts existed?

Best wishes,
Andre

On Sat, Jun 3, 2023 at 10:15 PM, Steve Shepherd wrote:

As an operator I learnt assembler on a 370/138 on dos/vs after reading Sharon K Tuggle’s Assembler Language Programming book. On night shifts I would squeeze in a few programs in BG.?

To drive it all home I wrote a version of Star Trek after playing a basic version on a Rank Xerox Sigma 9 on a previous contract.

Anyway, the program output was on the system console and caused no end of problems the next day when the (real) programmers couldn’t find their error messages because of a full console log.

the boss came to me the next day and I thought I was for the chop, but instead they offered me the vacant Systems Programmer job, which of course I readily accepted!

?

Hello Vince,

I always thought that even Pentium CPU was much faster than 370 m/fs. Well, i agree, m/f has a lot of disks, but you can attach 4 or more HDDs to your PC also.
For example, i have two SSD(for sys and data), one NVMe(for VM) and one HDD 7200rpm(for archives) attached to my system.

Those terminals you mentioned used modems, right? So when we dial the DOS/VS we emulate modem connection?
They usually was 1052 like printer-keyboards or 3270 displays?

On Sun, Jun 4, 2023 at 01:49 AM, Vince Coen wrote:

Based on your question#s :

Evening and night shift (of 8 hours) was because the early mainframes and that included as far as I was involved in IBM 1401, 360 and early 370s, ICL 1900's (1500 as well but they were totally Magnetic tape based). That said so was 1401 and many 360/370 as hard disks was expensive when they became available and very small in capacity i.,e from 80 - 300 MB or there about.

For the later system above i.e. 360/370 that had terminal user running CICS they mostly had to have other tasks to support them that where all Batch processes and these run during the quiet periods such as for one hour lunch time (may be) and after 18:00 to 08:30 plus all of the weekends.? Now programmers also submitted compile and basic testing and this was done during the day but mostly over night and the w/e and some programmers came in during the W/E and in my case to use the card punch to produce a source deck to input to the system for a compile but usually for fixes to the code that had to be then inserted into the original source decks. One reason for having to do it yourself was the punch room people could be very busy punching data card packs for input to the system so did not have a lot of time for doing programs.
Here the programmers wrote the source code on to forms that had the layout of a Cobol program with around 25 lines per page.

The rest of the evening and nights was processing the normal business workloads that was created during the day such as stock updates, payroll, other accounting processes among many others.
While the m/f was based on a slow CPU when using hard drives were a lot quicker than say a personal computer that was available from around 1977-8 (floppy disk based mostly but the one's with the early Winchester (early hard drives and 8 inches wide and a lot longer and were heavy) drives was not a lot faster.

The benefit of mainframes has always been there much faster processing with modern hard drives because that can access multiple drives where each had there own data bus -. A PC has only one and that is used for all data flows so compared very slow.

Remember a m/f is running many programs at once - (OK, may be time slicing) but a great deal more than the average micro based computer.

I have two desktops and both have multi core processors where on one is is 8 core in one chip (AMD) and the other, 2 XEON CPUs with 4 cores each and with the right O/S they do bash work though and not quicker than the older m/f's as mentioned above.

Bye the bye one of mine also had mag tapes (and cartridges) and they really slowed the system down so after a couple of years I replaced the lot with WD Black hard drives that are hot swappable.

Small point I came into computing around 1963 and obtained my first Micros around 1978 with the faster one;s around 1982 (Cromemco was one brand) but I was running the first company in Europe dealing in micros from 1975-6 selling all over the world - outside the USA and even then sometimes in despite some products (software including DOS, CPM, MPM, *nix, books, magazines and hardware came from the USA . ? ?

My first job in computing in 1963 was for 6 - 9 months as an operator on a 40 hour week earning 4 pounds per hour but if I worked the weekends on a 12 hour shift the rate doubled and I could take the rest of the next week off.
Some time the w/e was light so I would do some programming such as automating the systems IPL so it only needed one switch press and along with a small card desk and the 1401 system as up and running - otherwise you had to enter a lot of machine code then execute it to do the same.? That was shown to the boss who invited me to be a programmer and a considerable higher salary :)

I still did some operating though and got paid for it at my new rate :)

Oh boy - those where they days = when men where men and computers . . . .


On 03/06/2023 21:19, Andre wrote:

Hi Steve!

This is so cool! Do you have any more stories about working on 370? What type of programs usually was batched through the day? Business stuff? Scientific?
I know that ENIAC was used to compute trajectories for artillery. UNIVAC helped with census and also tried to forecast weather and election results.
After that a lot of Business companies adopted computers for calculating employee wages and stock lists.

This is ok, but i want to know how much time would it take to compute one of this tasks, how often they used to appear? Why night shifts existed?

Best wishes,
Andre

On Sat, Jun 3, 2023 at 10:15 PM, Steve Shepherd wrote:

As an operator I learnt assembler on a 370/138 on dos/vs after reading Sharon K Tuggle’s Assembler Language Programming book. On night shifts I would squeeze in a few programs in BG.?

To drive it all home I wrote a version of Star Trek after playing a basic version on a Rank Xerox Sigma 9 on a previous contract.

Anyway, the program output was on the system console and caused no end of problems the next day when the (real) programmers couldn’t find their error messages because of a full console log.

the boss came to me the next day and I thought I was for the chop, but instead they offered me the vacant Systems Programmer job, which of course I readily accepted!

?