Running a mainframe at home is a interesting IBM needs to listen

Hugo Drax

Oct 23, 2002

I never had the opportunity to touch a mainframe (born in 71) I live in the
world of TCP/IP,Servers,routers etc... but I have always found the big iron a
mystery and something I wanted to get some experience, my closest experience was
when I was a entry level tech some time ago and I worked on IDEA/IBM
controllers+3270 terms I remember having to call Techsupport to re-vary or gen
stuff but I never saw the magic, amazing to be doing this at home :). Anyhow
Great program and Im having fun trying to figure this out and learning the
ropes. I terminal serviced to my home PC with the open session and the Mainframe
guys were amazed at seeing this product, one of the guys went in and stated
messing with it and was truly amazed. Anyhow they are pretty helpful and printed
out some useful references,showed me some useful commands etc. My question is
why wont IBM promote something like this to students/hobbiests and others in
educational fields? I honestly think the secret to getting more people
interested in MVS etc.. is to make it available to the hobbiest/student or
educational field. Pretty powerful OS lots of facilities it is much more
enterprise than unix in what Im seeing so far.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

3:43 am

Re: Running a mainframe at home is a interesting IBM needs to listen

vmlamer

Oct 24, 2002

--- In hercules-390@y..., "Hugo Drax" <hugodrax@d...> wrote:
> I never had the opportunity to touch a mainframe (born in 71) I live
in the world of TCP/IP,Servers,routers heh heh heh

Frankly, if you were born in 71 and consider mvs to be anything other
than complete crap compared to unix, then one has to question if you
know either very well.

4:57 pm

Re: Running a mainframe at home is a interesting IBM needs to listen

Adam Thornton

Oct 24, 2002

On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 04:57:00PM +0000, vmlamer wrote:
> Frankly, if you were born in 71 and consider mvs to be anything other
> than complete crap compared to unix, then one has to question if you
> know either very well.

*I* was born in 1971.

I consider MVS to be something other than complete crap compared to
Unix. There are tasks I consider more appropriately handled by MVS,
and tasks I think Unix is more appropriate for.

I don't know MVS very well, but I do know Unix quite well.

Perhaps if you explained yourself a bit more I'd understand what you
mean, since it probably isn't "MVS 5uXX0rZ!!1! Un1X Ru13Z!11!" which is
what it came across as.

Adam
--
adam@...
"My eyes say their prayers to her / Sailors ring her bell / Like a moth
mistakes a light bulb / For the moon and goes to hell." -- Tom Waits

5:42 pm

Re: Running a mainframe at home is a interesting IBM needs to listen

Jay Maynard

Oct 24, 2002

On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 04:57:00PM -0000, vmlamer wrote:
> --- In hercules-390@y..., "Hugo Drax" <hugodrax@d...> wrote:
> > I never had the opportunity to touch a mainframe (born in 71) I live
> > in the world of TCP/IP,Servers,routers heh heh heh
> Frankly, if you were born in 71 and consider mvs to be anything other
> than complete crap compared to unix, then one has to question if you
> know either very well.

I bet you're the same bozo who posted a similar message in
alt.folklore.computers.

As I said there, the different OSes have different strengths. MVS is
uniquely suited for industrial strength batch processing, while Unix and VM
are suited more to interactive computing.

7:53 pm

Re: Running a mainframe at home is a interesting IBM needs to listen

Gregg C Levine

Oct 24, 2002

Hello from Gregg C Levine
Excuse me? I was born in 1962. And when I got involved with computers,
it happens, that the big thing on campus, was probably OS/360. It is
more capable then MVS, now, and even then, when MVS was evolving out of
probably MFT. I strongly suggest you tone down your postings, especially
since a lot of us, are also using Hercules to try out, different
solutions for Linux/390. Adam? You were born in '71? Wow...... Who here
is closest to my age? Bomber, that was a well written message, (I can
use your nickname here?). This technology is, well, peculiar, and
rightly so, it was designed early on. And the software is also peculiar,
the early OSes, with the exception of Linux/390 is all we have to work
with. Jay, the word bozo is a twenty point score, if you're playing
scrabble that is.
-------------------
Gregg C Levine hansolofalcon@...
------------------------------------------------------------
"The Force will be with you...Always." Obi-Wan Kenobi
"Use the Force, Luke." Obi-Wan Kenobi
(This company dedicates this E-Mail to General Obi-Wan Kenobi )
(This company dedicates this E-Mail to Master Yoda )

> -----Original Message-----
> From: vmlamer [mailto:vmlamer@...]
> Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 12:57 PM
> To: hercules-390@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [hercules-390] Re: Running a mainframe at home is a
interesting IBM
> needs to listen
>
> --- In hercules-390@y..., "Hugo Drax" <hugodrax@d...> wrote:
> > I never had the opportunity to touch a mainframe (born in 71) I live
> in the world of TCP/IP,Servers,routers heh heh heh
>
> Frankly, if you were born in 71 and consider mvs to be anything other
> than complete crap compared to unix, then one has to question if you
> know either very well.
>
>
> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
>
> Community email addresses:
> Post message: hercules-390@yahoogroups.com
> Subscribe: hercules-390-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
> Unsubscribe: hercules-390-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
> List owner: hercules-390-owner@yahoogroups.com
>
> Files and archives at:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390
>
> Get the latest version of Hercules from:
> http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>

8:12 pm

Re: Running a mainframe at home is a interesting IBM needs to listen

Hugo Drax

Oct 24, 2002

I been messing with it and reading on it it seems to have much more detailed
process control/batch control than unix. no where as friendly as unix but it
seems like an os designed for bigger type jobs. I know at my job they have
65,000+ PCs that access S390 all the time would disagree, I get the impression
that MVS is more robust in terms of heavyduty processing like banking,payroll
etc. critical stuff. Also the Logging seems much more detailed than my linux 8
especially and this is an old obsolete version I wish I could see what RACF and
the new stuff looks like.
----- Original Message -----
From: vmlamer
To: hercules-390@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 12:57 PM
Subject: [hercules-390] Re: Running a mainframe at home is a interesting IBM
needs to listen

--- In hercules-390@y..., "Hugo Drax" <hugodrax@d...> wrote:
> I never had the opportunity to touch a mainframe (born in 71) I live
in the world of TCP/IP,Servers,routers heh heh heh

Frankly, if you were born in 71 and consider mvs to be anything other
than complete crap compared to unix, then one has to question if you
know either very well.

Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
ADVERTISEMENT

Community email addresses:
Post message: hercules-390@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe: hercules-390-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Unsubscribe: hercules-390-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
List owner: hercules-390-owner@yahoogroups.com

Files and archives at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390

Get the latest version of Hercules from:
http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

8:24 pm

Re: Running a mainframe at home is a interesting IBM needs to listen

Peter J Farley III

Oct 25, 2002

--- In hercules-390@y..., "Gregg C Levine" <hansolofalcon@w...> wrote:
> Who here is closest to my age? Bomber, that was a well written
> message, (I can use your nickname here?).

Well, I'm not near you, but I am before you (1950). ;-)

Peter

P.S. -- If it matters, my first CPU was an IBM 1620 (2nd generation
relays-n-transistors HW, variable-length decimal operations, BCD
(6-bit) character set). It also had the first disk drive I ever saw,
an IBM 1311 (specs unknown). The horde of relay clicks when it was
"computing" was pretty noisy, as I remember.

12:58 am

Re: Running a mainframe at home is a interesting IBM needs to listen

Ronald Tatum

Oct 25, 2002

Oh, Lord,
I taught myself Fortran II on a 1620 in 1963, also got introduced to ALC
(FAP, actually) about the same time.

Lucky you, Peter, you had a disk; all the stupid machine I used had was
a card reader and punch - print from punched decks on a 407 accounting
machine.

Horrible thing - I should have quit while I was ahead. I had a key to
the lab where the machine was installed, McCracken's book, the manuals on
the console and shelves, and a bunch of card files. Learned how to turn the
infernal machine on, how to load the first pass of the compiler, collect the
intermediate decks, load the second pass, get the next set of decks, load
the libraries (a term loosely used) and the program, and start over again
because of one tensy-weensy key punch error...
I wish someone had sat me down and had a long heart-to-heart, but apparently
there weren't any "someones" at that early time.

Still, I have made a living of sorts over the years, had some fun and
collected 'way too many war stories ;-).
- Ron T.
October 1, 1940 - certainly old enough to know better.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter J Farley III" <pjfarley3@...>
To: <hercules-390@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 7:58 PM
Subject: [hercules-390] Re: Running a mainframe at home is a interesting IBM
needs to listen

> --- In hercules-390@y..., "Gregg C Levine" <hansolofalcon@w...> wrote:
> > Who here is closest to my age? Bomber, that was a well written
> > message, (I can use your nickname here?).
>
> Well, I'm not near you, but I am before you (1950). ;-)
>
> Peter
>
> P.S. -- If it matters, my first CPU was an IBM 1620 (2nd generation
> relays-n-transistors HW, variable-length decimal operations, BCD
> (6-bit) character set). It also had the first disk drive I ever saw,
> an IBM 1311 (specs unknown). The horde of relay clicks when it was
> "computing" was pretty noisy, as I remember.
>
>
>
> Community email addresses:
> Post message: hercules-390@yahoogroups.com
> Subscribe: hercules-390-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
> Unsubscribe: hercules-390-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
> List owner: hercules-390-owner@yahoogroups.com
>
> Files and archives at:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390
>
> Get the latest version of Hercules from:
> http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>

7:26 pm

Running a mainframe at home is a interesting IBM needs to listen

Andy Kane

Oct 26, 2002

Hi Ron,

"Lucky to have a disk"?? You were lucky to have a MACHINE at your
disposal!! At the same time you were learning, I was learning - also
from Dan McCracken's book, was there any other way?

The company I was working for bought time (billed by the hundredth of
an hour) on a 7090 at a Service Bureau. The standard procedure was to
submit your card deck (and a billing sheet, of course) to the
scheduler, who was a human, not a program. Every two or three hours,
they would gather a BATCH of work together, go card-to-tape off line
on a 1401, and then run "batch" under a primitive monitor called FMS.
Output was two tapes - print and punch images - which went offline
for tape-to-print and tape-to-punch.

Time was billed cheaper at night, so since we were located some 30
hard-traffic miles away from the Service Bureau, it was company policy
to allow only one run a day, for which they provided messenger pickup
at 8 PM and delivery at 7 AM the next morning. So... that "one little
keypunch error" meant a full day lost. Not something bosses liked. As
a result, we spent quite a bit of time in an activity long relegated
to the scrap heap of history - "desk checking".

Afterthought 1: Ron, I have you beat by 66 days: July 27, 1940!

Afterthought 2: Does anyone have - or know where to find - a copy of
McCracken and Dorn's book "Numerical Methods in Fortran Programming"
1964 edition? I have a personal reason for wanting a copy, or if that
isn't possible, a copy of the Acknowledgements page.

Shalom from Tel Aviv. Andy

--- In hercules-390@y..., "Ronald Tatum" <rhtatum@d...> wrote:
> Oh, Lord,
> I taught myself Fortran II on a 1620 in 1963, also got introduced
to ALC
> (FAP, actually) about the same time.
>
> Lucky you, Peter, you had a disk; all the stupid machine I used
had was
> a card reader and punch - print from punched decks on a 407
accounting
> machine.
>
> Horrible thing - I should have quit while I was ahead. I had a
key to
> the lab where the machine was installed, McCracken's book, the
manuals on
> the console and shelves, and a bunch of card files. Learned how to
turn the
> infernal machine on, how to load the first pass of the compiler,
collect the
> intermediate decks, load the second pass, get the next set of decks,
load
> the libraries (a term loosely used) and the program, and start over
again
> because of one tensy-weensy key punch error...
> I wish someone had sat me down and had a long heart-to-heart, but
apparently
> there weren't any "someones" at that early time.
>
> Still, I have made a living of sorts over the years, had some
fun and
> collected 'way too many war stories ;-).
> - Ron T.
> October 1, 1940 - certainly old enough to know better.

3:48 am

Re: Running a mainframe at home is a interesting IBM needs to listen

Jay Maynard

Oct 26, 2002

On Sat, Oct 26, 2002 at 03:48:37AM -0000, Andy Kane wrote:
> Afterthought 1: Ron, I have you beat by 66 days: July 27, 1940!

You're exactly 20 years older than me, then...27 July 1960.

And, FWIW, my first real mainframe work was done under VM/370 CMS: using a
FORTRAN cross-assembler for the 8080. I was a microcomputer tech at the
time. When the shop went to straight MVS (they had been using VS/1 under
VM), I spent a lot of time pestering the systems guys on converting the
EXECs to CLISTs - and that got their attention when the junior systems
programmer left for greener pa$ture$. They asked me if I was interested, and
the rest is history.

10:57 am