Key External Links

This page is to provide a quick reference for sites you will find yourself visiting often.

Obtaining hercules and installing a MVS3.8J (or any other available) operating system.

• obtaining hercules
• obtaining operating systems

Reference sites that will help you with MVS3.8J.

• Usergroup on Yahoo, however as Yahoo will stop hosting public groups in Dec2019 it is being migrated to https://groups.io/g/hercules-390
• Good Documentation Sites

Spicing it up, things you will want to install into TK3 or TK4-.

• Software/Usermod Sites. At a minimum TK3 users will want to install
  • the latest versions of IMON and QUEUE from Greg Price
  • you definately need the IND$FILE program linked to from the site run by Jay Moseley if you want any sort of file transfer function (that has to be manually installed on TK3, other versions already have it)
  • Rob Prins who actively maintains RPF has the latest at greatest on his site at http://www.prince-webdesign.nl/rpf. You may want to check whats there and install the latest
  The TK4- distribution has the above installed already
• You will probably also want a way to issue hercules commands (such as devinit) from within the guest OS, done using the DIAG8 instruction. Refer to the documentation I have on the two options to do so, the binary only herccmd from Grzes Plucinski or my assembler source for my MDDIAG8, both perform the same function, mine has source :-)
• Obtaining other operating systems should you want more than mvs3.8j
• And there are lots of goodies you will want to get from the CBTTAPE site, it keeps a lot of the older files available for mvs3.8j hobbiests.
  TK3 comes with dasd volumes containing many of the CBT files, TK4- has the TK3 cbt volumes optionally available, most of the files :-), I have had to download a few interesting extra files myself.
  Also some of the newer z/OS programs can be with a bit of effort recoded to run on mvs3.8j if you likeplaying with assembler

Replacements for IBM software

• RACF - RACF is an IBM licensed product and not freely available, an alternative is RAKF security for Turnkey3 is available on CBT tape 486 now. The TK4- distribution and those based on it already have RAKF installed
• CICS - CICS is an IBM licensed product and not freely available, an alternative is KICKS and programs written for KICKS should also be usable on CICS. The main website for this is http://www.kicksfortso.com with the most useful being the KICKS user manual.
  There is also a tutorial on YouTube on installing KICKS for TSO onto mvs3.8j by moshix who also provides a copy of the install files themselves at https://github.com/moshix/kicks
• REXX - The REXX programming language is available to mvs3.8j users with the port of BREXX to BREXX370. Documentation on installing this into a mvs3.8j TK3 system is best serverd by a brief tutorial at http://www.jaymoseley.com/hercules/brexx370/index.htm, Obviously you will have customised your system and need to use your own catalogs and prefixes etc. but it is a good walkthrough. One important thing to note is that datasets containing your rexx scripts are expected to be VB and lrecl 255; important as RPF cannot edit datasets in that format so you must use Review (rfe) to edit them which catches a lot of people out who prefer rpf.
• ISPF - ISPF from IBM is an IBM licensed product and not freely available, both RPF and Queue along with Review are perfectly usable replacements. However it should be noted that in true hobbiest fashion a 'from the ground up' creation of ISPF is being created by Wally Mclaughlin with a ISPV V2.0 beta announced to the mailing lists in 2018 at https://h390-mvs.yahoogroups.narkive.com/5eognrxv/ispf-v2-0-beta-announcement. Rob Prins has released an update to TK4- (the 20220914 release) which has this version of ISPF created by Wally installed. Refer to the obtaining mvs3.8j page for how to obtain that distribution.

Obtaining a 3270 terminal emulator

• For Linux X3270 is the best option. On Fedora with a GUI desktop "dnf -y install x3270 x3270-x11", and if you do not have a GUI desktop "dnf -y install x3270 x3270-text"
  I normally install x3270-text on GUI desktops as well as I am on the command line more often that not. x3270 is also available to use for Mac OS Xi although I am not sure of the package name for that
• For windows users search for wc3270 (which is a port of x3270 for windows), the current location seems to be http://x3270.bgp.nu/download.html
• For windows users there is also qws3270 qws3270 tn3270 (Telnet 3270 client) terminal emulator, version 3.2f of June/1995, by Jim Rymerson, Queen's University, Kingston, Ont.
• For OS X users Dez Blanchfield has also let me know there is a OS X version of tn3270 available at https://www.brown.edu/cis/tn3270/ for Mac users although check your version of OS X is supported from that page as it does state it does not support the 64 bit architecture from macOS 10.15 Catalina and above