Many of us used “big iron” back in the day. Computers like the IBM S/360 or 3090 are hard to find, transport, and operate, so you don’t see many retrocomputer enthusiasts with an S/370 in their garages. We’ve known for a while that the Hercules emulators would let you run virtual copies of these old mainframes, but every time we’ve looked at setting any up, it winds up being more work than we wanted to spend. Enter [Ernie] of [ErnieTech’s Little Mainframes]. He’s started a channel to show you how to “build” your own mainframe — emulated, of course.
One problem with the mainframe environment is that there are a bunch of operating system-like things like MVS, VM/CMS, and TSO. There were even custom systems like MUSIC/SP, which he shows in the video below.
On top of that, you have to learn a lot of new software. Scripting? Rexx. Editing? Several choices, but none you are likely to know about if you haven’t used a mainframe before. Programming languages? You can find C sometimes, but it might not be a modern dialect. You might have more luck with FORTRAN or COBOL.
In addition, IBM has specific terms for things we don’t use in the rest of the world. Boot? IPL (initial program load). Disk? DASD. Security? RACF.
So far, [Ernie] only has an overview and a short demo. If you can’t wait, cruise over to the Hercules page and see how far you can get. You may decide to wait for [Ernie’s] next video.
If you want to shortcut, there are entire environments in Docker that can be handy. If your IBM nostalgia runs to the smaller System/3, AS/400, or POWER systems, someone already has something ready for you to use.
This articles is written by : Fady Askharoun Samy Askharoun
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