z/OS ADCD/DEMOpkg

ip4work

Jun 5, 2009

Hello everyone!

I'm quite new to the whole mainframe world, so please don't hate me if my
question is out of the context of this group. O:)

We're running z/OS 1.9 (amongst other things) at work and since I'm a mf-newbie
I would like to run it on my PC and educate a bit (for personal use).

I know the only legal way to do this is by buying FLEX-ES, but it has a high
price and isn't an option in this case.
I also know there is a free variant of MVS Tur(n)key 3.8 + RDF, but that's also
not an option. :(

So please advise me/suggest, where to obtain any of the two mentioned versions
(ADCD or DEMOpkg) of z/OS (I guess 1.7 - 1.10 is ok), which I would use with
Hercules to do some learning "under the radar". ^_^

TIA!

P.S. I'm also aware of the cckdump procedure, which I wouldn't prefer to do.

11:27 am

Re: z/OS ADCD/DEMOpkg

kerravon86

Jun 6, 2009

--- In hercules-390@yahoogroups.com, "ip4work" <ip4work@...> wrote:
>
> I also know there is a free variant of MVS Tur(n)key 3.8
> + RDF, but that's also not an option. :(

Why not? What specifically do you want to learn?
You can more-or-less spend your entire life learning
about 370 assembler and MVS on the free version.

Try wading through all the system macros (documented
on IBM's website, and most/lots available on the
free version). I can remember asking our sysprog
if I could borrow "the" TSO manual so that I could
learn TSO and he told me that there wasn't just one,
there was an entire bookshelf. That was back in
about 1987. 20 years on and I still find the
prospect of borrowing "the" manual daunting.

So much so that I stopped reading manuals and just
ran C programs to probe memory from a safe distance.

But of course, that didn't work when I didn't have
a C compiler. Only 2 days ago did it become safe to
reenter the MVS world.

BFN. Paul.

12:55 am

Re: z/OS ADCD/DEMOpkg

ip4work

Jun 8, 2009

Hello Paul,

thank You for your response!

I would prefer to learn on the "real thing" to achieve experience and better
skills when using it on work. That's mostly what I want to learn, also things
like SDSF and RACF (in combination with JCL).
Experiment without harm, in another words...
(and as I noticed so far, there is a great difference between ISPF and RDF, but
a big respect to the RDF author for all the effort!)

Since I learned so far that this goal (getting ADCD) is near to impossible, I'm
thinking of using the cckdump procedure, so any info/resource on that subject is
very welcome!

TSO is quite a big challenge, as you wrote :) So I'm trying to go with the
basics at the moment (with TSO).

C compiler is only available under OMVS if I'm not mistaken?

Cheers!

> > I also know there is a free variant of MVS Tur(n)key 3.8
> > + RDF, but that's also not an option. :(
>
> Why not? What specifically do you want to learn?
> You can more-or-less spend your entire life learning
> about 370 assembler and MVS on the free version.
>
> Try wading through all the system macros (documented
> on IBM's website, and most/lots available on the
> free version). I can remember asking our sysprog
> if I could borrow "the" TSO manual so that I could
> learn TSO and he told me that there wasn't just one,
> there was an entire bookshelf. That was back in
> about 1987. 20 years on and I still find the
> prospect of borrowing "the" manual daunting.
>
> So much so that I stopped reading manuals and just
> ran C programs to probe memory from a safe distance.
>
> But of course, that didn't work when I didn't have
> a C compiler. Only 2 days ago did it become safe to
> reenter the MVS world.
>
> BFN. Paul.

7:13 am

Re: z/OS ADCD/DEMOpkg

kerravon86

Jun 8, 2009

--- In hercules-390@yahoogroups.com, "ip4work" <ip4work@...> wrote:
>
> I would prefer to learn on the "real thing" to achieve
> experience and better skills when using it on work.

Most of it is real. Most programs that you write
on MVS 3.8j will work unchanged on MVS/380.

However, if you're not doing programming, that's
a moot point.

It sounds like you want product experience. In which
case, yes, you need to use the real thing. On the
other hand, one of the things you want to learn is
JCL. You could learn JCL at home, and learn RACF
at work. I'm not sure there's a lot to learn about
RACF or SDSF compared to learning JCL.

> I'm thinking of using the cckdump procedure

I'm not familiar with that side of things.

> TSO is quite a big challenge, as you wrote :) So
> I'm trying to go with the basics at the moment
> (with TSO).

Ok.

> C compiler is only available under OMVS if I'm not mistaken?

You're very much mistake. IBM was one of the
first people to have a C89-compliant compiler
(in 1989). I installed it myself as soon as it
was released. C/370 V1R1M0.

Nowadays of course, no-one uses C/370. Everyone
uses GCCMVS. Well, maybe that's a slight
exaggeration.

http://gccmvs.sourceforge.net

BTW, I looked up the standard, and while there is
a requirement for text files to be able to be
written and reread with some minimal discrepancies
allowed, ditto for binary, I didn't see anything
that says you can go from text to binary back to
text and not have your data mangled. So, technically
IBM isn't non-conforming even for RECFM=U. Their
implementation just sucks because they could do so
much better at making file transfer from PC to
mainframe be not much different from PC to Unix.
No nonsense about records required.

BFN. Paul.

11:24 am

Re: z/OS ADCD/DEMOpkg

ip4work

Jun 8, 2009

> Most of it is real. Most programs that you write
> on MVS 3.8j will work unchanged on MVS/380.
>
> However, if you're not doing programming, that's
> a moot point.
>
> It sounds like you want product experience. In which
> case, yes, you need to use the real thing. On the
> other hand, one of the things you want to learn is
> JCL. You could learn JCL at home, and learn RACF
> at work. I'm not sure there's a lot to learn about
> RACF or SDSF compared to learning JCL.

Yes, that's mostly it. I have some light experience with JCL and JCL debugging
and now I was thinking about writting various jobs that could interact with RACF
and other things (ie. starting using the JES utilities for working with other
subsystems).
Also, I would like to learn on my mistakes, but not at work. ^_^

I guess ADCD can only be obtained from the IBM people privately and it seems I'm
out of luck.. -_-

> > C compiler is only available under OMVS if I'm not mistaken?
>
> You're very much mistake. IBM was one of the
> first people to have a C89-compliant compiler
> (in 1989). I installed it myself as soon as it
> was released. C/370 V1R1M0.
>
> Nowadays of course, no-one uses C/370. Everyone
> uses GCCMVS. Well, maybe that's a slight
> exaggeration.
>
> http://gccmvs.sourceforge.net
>

Great! Thanks for the information.
But, GCCMVS is intended (mostly) for MVS 3.8 and not z/OS, right?

> BTW, I looked up the standard, and while there is
> a requirement for text files to be able to be
> written and reread with some minimal discrepancies
> allowed, ditto for binary, I didn't see anything
> that says you can go from text to binary back to
> text and not have your data mangled. So, technically
> IBM isn't non-conforming even for RECFM=U. Their
> implementation just sucks because they could do so
> much better at making file transfer from PC to
> mainframe be not much different from PC to Unix.
> No nonsense about records required.

We're using FTP for PC to mainframe (and vice-versa), and it seems to work
nicely (so far:).

11:53 am

Re: z/OS ADCD/DEMOpkg

kerravon86

Jun 8, 2009

--- In hercules-390@yahoogroups.com, "ip4work" <ip4work@...> wrote:
>
> Great! Thanks for the information.
> But, GCCMVS is intended (mostly) for MVS 3.8 and not z/OS, right?

No. It's intended for z/OS primarily, although I
expect that MVS/380 will always get the most use.
MVS 3.8j would be the 3rd target. There are very
few people who would want to compile C programs
on MVS, but prefer to stay on MVS 3.8j instead of
upgrading to a 31-bit system. GCC370 is provided
on the XMIT mainly because the compile scripts
evolved to a point where produce a 24-bit version
at the same time as the 31-bit version was simple.

> > much better at making file transfer from PC to
> > mainframe be not much different from PC to Unix.
> > No nonsense about records required.
>
> We're using FTP for PC to mainframe (and vice-versa),
> and it seems to work nicely (so far:).

The problem I mentioned would only show up if you
were sending ascii, not binary, files to the host,
and storing them in RECFM=U datasets (which is a
nice form for them to be stored in as far as overhead
is concerned - same as Unix in fact), but it first
gets processed by a generic program, such as zip,
which doesn't know that these are text files, so
opens them in binary mode.

If IBM didn't rely on block boundaries, then zipping
up MVS files, or doing a hexdump of a RECFM=U text
file, wouldn't be a problem.

BFN. Paul.

1:20 pm

Re: z/OS ADCD/DEMOpkg

Jay Maynard

Jun 8, 2009

On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 01:20:44PM -0000, kerravon86 wrote:
> --- In hercules-390@yahoogroups.com, "ip4work" <ip4work@...> wrote:
> > Great! Thanks for the information.
> > But, GCCMVS is intended (mostly) for MVS 3.8 and not z/OS, right?
>
> No. It's intended for z/OS primarily, although I
> expect that MVS/380 will always get the most use.
> MVS 3.8j would be the 3rd target. There are very
> few people who would want to compile C programs
> on MVS, but prefer to stay on MVS 3.8j instead of
> upgrading to a 31-bit system.

Sorry, but I must take issue with this comment. There are more than a few
folks out there who need to run a freely available OS, and want to compile C
programs - but don't want to run a single-user system, or one that has major
security and integrity holes because the architecture was extended in a
manner not designed for integrity.

I'm not belittling MVS/380; I'm just pointing out that it's not for
everyone.
--
Jay Maynard, K5ZC http://www.conmicro.com
http://jmaynard.livejournal.com http://www.tronguy.net
http://www.hercules-390.org (Yes, that's me!)
Buy Hercules stuff at http://www.cafepress.com/hercules-390

1:28 pm