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lboc

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lee at shuuten dot org

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ibm.biz 5y ago

Free Stuff for your Mainframe (2020)

lboc
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FPS.cob: A first person shooter in COBOL 1 month ago

I think Intercomm is bundled in the TK5 distribution of MVS 3.8 now. They got clearance from the owners a while back as I recall.

I'm assuming it's the same Intercomm you're talking about.

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A tiny self-remaking C program 2 years ago

Seems to be replicating mainframe JCL and in-stream data sets. Processing instructions and input are combined in a single file. Used all the time for compiling, running utilities etc.

I'm guessing that this (IBM) example is setting the delimeter to '@@' to avoid problems with the comment - JCL also understands the '/*' sequence. I've not seen it used with other languages (Cobol etc.)

    //jobname    JOB   acctno,name...
    //COMPILE    EXEC  PGM=CCNDRVR,
    // PARM='/SEARCH(''CEE.SCEEH.+'') NOOPT SO OBJ'
    //STEPLIB    DD    DSNAME=CEE.SCEERUN,DISP=SHR
    //           DD    DSNAME=CEE.SCEERUN2,DISP=SHR
    //           DD    DSNAME=CBC.SCCNCMP,DISP=SHR
    //SYSLIN     DD    DSNAME=MYID.MYPROG.OBJ(MEMBER),DISP=SHR
    //SYSPRINT   DD    SYSOUT=*
    //SYSIN      DD    DATA,DLM=@@
      #include <stdio.h>
      ⋮
      int main(void)
      {
      /*  comment   */
      ⋮
      }
    @@
    //SYSUT1     DD    DSN=...
    ⋮
    //*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_Control_Language#In-stream...*
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A 23-byte “hello, world” program assembled with DEBUG.EXE in MS-DOS 4 years ago

I've seen it done fairly often in mainframe assembler - embed an 'eyecatcher' string near the top of your program and jump to the real entry point. Used as an aid for debugging when reading dumps I believe. Not generally program data though, ususally metadata like program name, author, date assembled etc.

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Has Mainframe Computing Inadvertently Started Its Own Culture War? 4 years ago

zxplore is a free z/OS course (what used to be called 'Master the Mainframe'):

https://ibmzxplore.influitive.com/users/sign_in

Also a bunch of free courses here:

https://learn.ibm.com/

(free registration required)

(EDIT) If you're in the US and meet the requirements (take free courses) you might also be interested in this for (I believe) $120/year:

https://ibm.github.io/zdt-learners-edition-about/

Email in profile if you want to know more.

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IBM Parallel Sysplex 4 years ago

One possible reason why: customers might want to be able to upgrade their hardware/OS/whatever and retain their 5 9s.

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Ask HN: Where to find opportunities to practice z/OS CICS development? 5 years ago

Try this for a bunch of free z courses (with real machine access for labs)

https://www.ibm.com/training/

I've done 4 or 5 including z/OS and COBOL.

There's also:

https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/education/zxplore

Which appears to be the replacement for the Master the Mainframe program. Includes real machine access.

Although it's usefulness in comparison to real z/OS access is debatable, you might also check out the TK4- system which is an old MVS packaged along with the Hercules emulator. A lot of stuff hasn't changed in z/OS, but a lot has.

http://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/

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Nq – A simple Unix job queue system 5 years ago

The AIX print spooler can be used as a generic queueing system - I remember setting up queues with shells as backends. Jobs sent to those queues would then be executed in sequence, and could be cancelled/reprioritized/etc like any print job.

Can't claim any credit for the idea though, it was actually suggested in the documentation...

It might be possible on other unix systems too, but I never had to try it.

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Free Stuff for your Mainframe (2020) 6 years ago

Sorry, both the title link and the one I added seem to produce the same permission error now. I've asked the author about it and will update if I hear anything back.

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IBM Z mainframes revived by Red Hat, AI and security 6 years ago

The 'service bureau' does what you're talking about, and has done for a very long time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_bureau#Histories

I have no idea about the current level of activity in this sector (mainframe proceesing as a service), but would not be at all surprised to find it greatly diminished from it's heyday when dinosaurs roamed the raised floor.

I don't think it takes a huge leap to draw a connection between these businesses and the cloud providers of today.

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The cpio trailer problem (2018) 6 years ago

It sees some use in z/OS. For example, open source tarballs aren't generally EBCDIC, so:

pax -rvf automake-1.16.tar -o from=ISO8859-1,to=IBM-1047

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