The Hercules System/370 and ESA/390 Emulator

My first experience with a computer was at HemisFair '68 in San Antonio. IBM had a pavilion there with some sort of mainframe (I don't remember what), driving 8 or so 2260s (I think). It ran a program that would tell you exactly how old you were, down to the second. Pretty mundane stuff now, but to an 8-year-old...
I broke into systems work 12 years later, doing MVS on a 370/158AP. It was fun...but I wanted a box of my own. The long series of PCs I've owned since then have been fun, but nothing quite captures the flavor of running the big iron like, well, running the big iron.

That is, until now...

Hercules is a System/370 and ESA/390 emulator which can IPL and execute S/370 and ESA/390 instructions. It can also emulate CKD and FBA DASD, printer, card reader, tape, channel-to-channel adapter, and local non-SNA 3270 devices.

Follow these links to find out more:

• Hercules Frequently-Asked Questions
• Hercules Installation and Operation
• What's new in this release
• The Hercules Public Licence

Download the current version, 1.66:

• hercules-1.66.tar.gz [ http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules/hercules-1.66.tar.gz ]: Source tarball
• hercules-1.66-1.i386.rpm [ http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules/hercules-1.66-1.i386.rpm ]: Intel 386 RPM
• hercules-1.66-1.alpha.rpm [ http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules/hercules-1.66-1.alpha.rpm ]: Alpha RPM
• hercules-1.66-1.src.rpm [ http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules/hercules-1.66-1.src.rpm ]: Source RPM (if you want to build RPMs yourself)

If you have any questions or comments, join the hercules-390 discussion group at http://www.onelist.com/community/hercules-390

Bug reports (together with your diagnosis of the fault, please) may be sent to me, Jay Maynard [ http://www.conmicro.cx ], at jmaynard @ conmicro.cx.

IBM, System/370, and ESA/390 are registered trademarks of IBM Corporation. Other product names mentioned here are trademarks of other companies.

Last updated 3 August 2000

Copyright 2000