On 19/03/2025 21:27, Fish Fish via groups.io wrote:
Dave Wade wrote:
BlameTroi wrote:
[...]
I'm wanting to rebuild my first serious shop in my home:
VM hosting DOS/VS. I see that there are Hercules Aethra
and SDL Hercules versions. Is there any reason to prefer
one over the other for running VMCE?
I don't believe for any of the 370 based OSs such as VM/370 R6
which is the base for VM/CE there is any difference. In fact
at the risk of irking Jay and Fish I would say that on a PI
one of the 3.X releases might work better as they are a little
lighter.
While it's true that the older 3.x releases of Hercules are certainly faster than the SDL 4.x Hyperion releases, they are also buggier, failing to pass more than one of SDL Hyperion's Quality Assurance tests, producing either incorrect results or outright crashing. I would personally not recommend using it for that simple reason alone.
As far as I know, Jay's Aethra is supposed to be identical to a current SDL 4.x Hyperion version of Hercules, but without many of the modern more advanced z/Architectural features that newer more modern "z" operating systems need/require, but which older legacy operating systems such as VM/370 R6 have no need for, thus making it slightly faster than SDL 4.x Hyperion. (How much faster, I have no idea. I've never bothered to try measuring it.)
So, to summarize:
* 3.x: buggy. Not personally recommended.
* Aethra: same(?) as SDL 4.x but without the
unneeded modern z/Arch features, and thus
*possibly* faster than SDL 4.x Hyperion.
(But its speed advantage(?) -- if any --
has never been measured as far as I know.)
* SDL 4.x Hyperion: the most current up to date
and recommended version of Hercules designed
for BOTH modern z/Arch operating systems AND
older legacy operating systems as well, but
slower than Hercules 3.x. (Not sure about
Aethra as I never bothered to measure it.)
So you have to ask yourself: Which would you personally prefer?
To more quickly arrive at *possibly* the wrong answer? (3.x)
Is the 370 emulation really buggy if you disable the assists?
Or to more slowly and more confidently arrive at the right answer? (SDL and probably Aethra as well)
To me this is more "bloat ware" with feature such as IEEE floating point , 31 & 64 bit code, various network interfaces and pile of other stuff I don't use.
I would really like a smaller lighter Hercules for use with legacy operating systems..
Your choice.
(but I know which one *I* would personally prefer!)
Yes but you aren't running 370 code on a PI.
Dave
