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Hi All,
I guess this question probably comes up a lot, but here we go again. :)
I wondered if anyone had a good source for VM/ESA era manuals they could point me to? I've looked on Bitsavers but there doesn't seem to be much.
I'm mostly interested in ESA because it seems both relatively easy to run on Hercules and likely to have manuals in original electronic format. The latter is particularly helpful for me as a totally blind user. OCR is not ideal.
I know a lot of things used to be available from IBM, but they seem to move around a lot or vanishh without much fanfare.
I'm particularly looking for electronic copies of any tutorial material, the general information manuals, concepts, and so on. I'm very new to mainframes as a hobby, though have a slight acquaintance with MVS and its ilk.
Thanks much :)
Best,
Zack.
P.S. I did find a thread earlier which linked to a giant Internet Archive directory, but that interface is absurd and I have no idea how to find anything in particular using the big table.
--
Zachary Kline
zkline@...
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There are some manuals at
but to reach them you need to know the exact filename (pdf) to get
access. When you go to this exact url you get an error, and
certainly no listing of all available files. So it's hard to say
if the VM/ESA manuals are in there.
A few years ago there was a website that provided an active
bookmanager but he got a take-down request from IBM, IBM stated
that it's proprietary content was available on the IBM website.
Well, maybe back then, but certainly not anymore. All IBM
Bookmanager websites have been shutdown in recent years, or at
least the bookmanager application is no longer available. Publibz
used to host such environment. At least I'm glad I still have my
old bookmanager files available, that includes all VM/ESA 2.x
manuals. If you manage to get hold of an old documention CD that
will include the bookmanager files. PDF versions of the
publications is more recent, I have some PDF versions of VM/ESA
2.4 but not from earlier versions, that's all .BOO.
Apart from Bitsavers I don't know if there is any easy accessable
material available.
For general VM manuals you might take a look at the official IBM
VM Libarary page. In Indexed pdf's at
there is a zip file with the old
z/VM 5.4 documentation. Indeed while not ideal, most of it is also
applicable for VM/ESA. Obviously z/VM has a lot of new features
that is not included in VM/ESA but it does help.
Regards, Berry.
Op 26-03-2025 om 05:31 schreef Zachary
Kline via groups.io:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Hi All,
I guess this question probably comes up a lot, but here we go again. :)
I wondered if anyone had a good source for VM/ESA era manuals they could point me to? I've looked on Bitsavers but there doesn't seem to be much.
I'm mostly interested in ESA because it seems both relatively easy to run on Hercules and likely to have manuals in original electronic format. The latter is particularly helpful for me as a totally blind user. OCR is not ideal.
I know a lot of things used to be available from IBM, but they seem to move around a lot or vanishh without much fanfare.
I'm particularly looking for electronic copies of any tutorial material, the general information manuals, concepts, and so on. I'm very new to mainframes as a hobby, though have a slight acquaintance with MVS and its ilk.
Thanks much :)
Best,
Zack.
P.S. I did find a thread earlier which linked to a giant Internet Archive directory, but that interface is absurd and I have no idea how to find anything in particular using the big table.
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On Wed, Mar 26, 2025 at 10:49 AM, Berry van Sleeuwen wrote:
There are some manuals at but to reach them you need to know the exact filename (pdf) to get access. When you go to this exact url you get an error, and certainly no listing of all available files. So it's hard to say if the VM/ESA manuals are in there.
?
I think all the ESA documents have been removed.. Following the link from the product announcement page gives a 404
?
A few years ago there was a website that provided an active bookmanager but he got a take-down request from IBM, IBM stated that it's proprietary content was available on the IBM website. Well, maybe back then, but certainly not anymore. All IBM Bookmanager websites have been shutdown in recent years, or at least the bookmanager application is no longer available. Publibz used to host such environment. At least I'm glad I still have my old bookmanager files available, that includes all VM/ESA 2.x manuals. If you manage to get hold of an old documention CD that will include the bookmanager files. PDF versions of the publications is more recent, I have some PDF versions of VM/ESA 2.4 but not from earlier versions, that's all .BOO.
I know of at least one site with .BOO files. The Library Reader for Windows and later Softcopy Reader which reads these is still downloadable from the IBM web site
?
?
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/ibm-softcopy-reader-windows-v40-0
Apart from Bitsavers I don't know if there is any easy accessable material available.
There once was an IBM utility to manage these, but it seems to have vanished. The book files seem to have vanished.
For general VM manuals you might take a look at the official IBM VM Libarary page. In Indexed pdf's at there is a zip file with the old z/VM 5.4 documentation. Indeed while not ideal, most of it is also applicable for VM/ESA. Obviously z/VM has a lot of new features that is not included in VM/ESA but it does help.
Regards, Berry.
Op 26-03-2025 om 05:31 schreef Zachary Kline via groups.io:
Hi All,
I guess this question probably comes up a lot, but here we go again. :)
I wondered if anyone had a good source for VM/ESA era manuals they could point me to? I've looked on Bitsavers but there doesn't seem to be much.
I'm mostly interested in ESA because it seems both relatively easy to run on Hercules and likely to have manuals in original electronic format. The latter is particularly helpful for me as a totally blind user. OCR is not ideal.
I know a lot of things used to be available from IBM, but they seem to move around a lot or vanishh without much fanfare.
I'm particularly looking for electronic copies of any tutorial material, the general information manuals, concepts, and so on. I'm very new to mainframes as a hobby, though have a slight acquaintance with MVS and its ilk.
Thanks much :)
Best,
Zack.
P.S. I did find a thread earlier which linked to a giant Internet Archive directory, but that interface is absurd and I have no idea how to find anything in particular using the big table.
|
On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 09:32 PM, Zachary Kline wrote:
The latter is particularly helpful for me as a totally blind user.
I am not sure what you mean here, no previous knowledge or no sight? :-/
?
Anyway, if it is the first, I would recommend reading this:
?
?
It introduces to the basics of z/VM (actually z/VM 5.3) but most of the material there applies to VM/ESA as well (since it covers the basics).
?
Cheers,
?
Rene FERLAND, Montreal
?
P.S. -- I have a fairly complete documentation of z/VM 5.3 in PDF format (81 books for 288M). If you are interested, just tell me, I will send it to you.
?
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Before IBM took down a very handy publication website, I was able to get some of VM/ESA 2.4 documentation.? I use SoftCopy Reader to access my manuals and the folder for VM/ESA 2.4 pubs is about 263mb consisting of 125 files that are PDF and BOO.
?
Let me know if you are interested.
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On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 11:32 PM, Zachary Kline wrote:
I wondered if anyone had a good source for VM/ESA era manuals they could point me to? I've looked on Bitsavers but there doesn't seem to be much.
I've stumbled on this collection, in BookManager format.
?
?
?... Mark S.
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Hi?René and all,
Thanks for the quick and helpful responses. I am, as it happens, without sight of any kind, hence why I prefer documents in original electronic format whenever possible to spare me from having to figure out what the sometimes badly mangled OCR results are saying.
I've so far found the provided redbook invaluable. I'm at the point of running MVS/ESA under VM using pre-provided directory entries, which is a decent step :)
I particularly appreciate the block-oriented nature of the 3270, as the screen reader program handles it in some ways far better than more typical character-by-character UI on, say, Linx.
I will reach out off-list regarding the larger manual collections, as I don't want to clutter up the traffic :)
Best,
Zack.
On Wed, Mar 26, 2025, at 9:08 AM, René Ferland via groups.io wrote:
On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 09:32 PM, Zachary Kline wrote:
The latter is particularly helpful for me as a totally blind user.
I am not sure what you mean here, no previous knowledge or no sight? :-/
?
Anyway, if it is the first, I would recommend reading this:
?
?
It introduces to the basics of z/VM (actually z/VM 5.3) but most of the material there applies to VM/ESA as well (since it covers the basics).
?
Cheers,
?
Rene FERLAND, Montreal
?
P.S. -- I have a fairly complete documentation of z/VM 5.3 in PDF format (81 books for 288M). If you are interested, just tell me, I will send it to you.
?
|
As a somewhat frustrated follow-up, I've discovered that my screen reader does not handle the IBM Softcopy utility at all, at least not without use of OCR, which is the very problem I was trying to avoid. :) So I'm either stuck using books in PDF or figuring out how to convert BOO files to another format, which appears to be non-trivial.
Thanks for the tip concernning versions of ZVM. The core concepts appear to be similar even if the details differ. I will continue the journey despite setbacks :)
Best,
Zack.
On Wed, Mar 26, 2025, at 4:24 PM, Zachary Kline via groups.io wrote:
Hi?René and all,
Thanks for the quick and helpful responses. I am, as it happens, without sight of any kind, hence why I prefer documents in original electronic format whenever possible to spare me from having to figure out what the sometimes badly mangled OCR results are saying.
I've so far found the provided redbook invaluable. I'm at the point of running MVS/ESA under VM using pre-provided directory entries, which is a decent step :)
I particularly appreciate the block-oriented nature of the 3270, as the screen reader program handles it in some ways far better than more typical character-by-character UI on, say, Linx.
I will reach out off-list regarding the larger manual collections, as I don't want to clutter up the traffic :)
Best,
Zack.
On Wed, Mar 26, 2025, at 9:08 AM, René Ferland via groups.io wrote:
On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 09:32 PM, Zachary Kline wrote:
The latter is particularly helpful for me as a totally blind user.
I am not sure what you mean here, no previous knowledge or no sight? :-/
?
Anyway, if it is the first, I would recommend reading this:
?
?
It introduces to the basics of z/VM (actually z/VM 5.3) but most of the material there applies to VM/ESA as well (since it covers the basics).
?
Cheers,
?
Rene FERLAND, Montreal
?
P.S. -- I have a fairly complete documentation of z/VM 5.3 in PDF format (81 books for 288M). If you are interested, just tell me, I will send it to you.
?
|
You might want to look at the boo2pdf program by Kevin Bowling at
.
I tried to get it working in my Linux machine but for now it
failed. Probably because I have a 64-bit system, it looks like
boo2pdf requires a 32 bit environment. I do plan to install an
older system to try it again.
Regards, Berry.
Op 27-03-2025 om 04:48 schreef Zachary
Kline via groups.io:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
As a somewhat frustrated
follow-up, I've discovered that my screen reader does not handle
the IBM Softcopy utility at all, at least not without use of
OCR, which is the very problem I was trying to avoid. :) So I'm
either stuck using books in PDF or figuring out how to convert
BOO files to another format, which appears to be non-trivial.
Thanks for the tip concernning
versions of ZVM. The core concepts appear to be similar even if
the details differ. I will continue the journey despite setbacks
:)
Best,
Zack.
On Wed, Mar 26, 2025, at 4:24 PM, Zachary Kline via groups.io
wrote:
Hi?René and all,
Thanks for the quick and helpful
responses. I am, as it happens, without sight of any kind,
hence why I prefer documents in original electronic format
whenever possible to spare me from having to figure out what
the sometimes badly mangled OCR results are saying.
I've so far found the provided
redbook invaluable. I'm at the point of running MVS/ESA under
VM using pre-provided directory entries, which is a decent
step :)
I particularly appreciate the
block-oriented nature of the 3270, as the screen reader
program handles it in some ways far better than more typical
character-by-character UI on, say, Linx.
I will reach out off-list
regarding the larger manual collections, as I don't want to
clutter up the traffic :)
Best,
Zack.
On Wed, Mar 26, 2025, at 9:08 AM, René Ferland via
groups.io wrote:
On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 09:32 PM, Zachary Kline wrote:
The latter is particularly helpful for me as a
totally blind user.
I am not sure what you mean here, no previous knowledge
or no sight? :-/
?
Anyway, if it is the first, I would recommend reading
this:
?
?
It introduces to the basics of z/VM (actually z/VM 5.3)
but most of the material there applies to VM/ESA as well
(since it covers the basics).
?
Cheers,
?
Rene FERLAND, Montreal
?
P.S. -- I have a fairly complete documentation of z/VM
5.3 in PDF format (81 books for 288M). If you are
interested, just tell me, I will send it to you.
?
|
On Thu, 27 Mar 2025 at 11:03, Berry van Sleeuwen via groups.io <berry.vansleeuwen@...> wrote: You might want to look at the boo2pdf program by Kevin Bowling at . Well that was exciting for a few moments. But it's really just a front end that invokes the IBM machine code (SOs/DLLs) that actually implements the .BOO (BookManager) file processing. If *that* was in Java then it could be trivially decompiled and understood. But to my knowledge IBM has never released code or even documentation for any part of this format. Tony H.
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Zachary Kline
René Ferland
Jim Snellen
Mark A. Stevens