Obtaining operating systems to run under hercules
Once you have your hercules version of choice installed you will need an operating system to run under it. There are many to choose from.
If you are from a MVS background or simply want to be able to find some support via google searches mvs3.8j is your best option; although music/sp also seems to still have a lot of active users. For those of us that are older and still remember how to use even older operating systems many of those are available also.
This is a short list of the operating systems I know about so far. Each link will take you to a page with more information on the operating system you are interested in. I expect this list will grow over time.
- MVS3.8J (many options) - MVS3.8J is probably the most common operating system used by hobbiests and the one you will be most comfortable with anyone coming from a MVS background. It also has installed pretty much all the compilers you are ever likely to need
- OS/360, VM/370, OS/VS1 - are all available and seem to work well. If you are comfortable with VM/370 it is quite possible to run MVS3.8J under VM/370 (even I got it working, although did not know enough about vm/370 to get more than one console and tso session assigned/attached). But if you are interested in those OS's they are available
- OS/360 MVT - Another copy of os/360 but this one includes both ASP and HASP and the moshix youtube channel has a tutorial/walkthrough for it
- DOS/VS - This will get you a working DOS/VS system (running under VM/370)
- MTS (Michigan Terminal System) - one of the first time sharing systems for IBM hardware, and not only pre-dates anything IBM produced for capable IBM hardware but remained in use in Universities for 33 years. If you are used to MVS you will struggle with this one but it is certainly worth a look
- MUSIC/SP (McGill User System for Interactive Computing) - created by McGill University based on the IBM 1966 RAX operating system and used by hundreds of universities on IBM hardware in preference to IBM operating systems; although according to WikiPedia it was adopted by IBM as a "system product" in 1985. This is a recent operating system in that is was under active maintenance/enhancement until 1999 and the distribution OS is at ESA/390 level and has full tcpip (ftp, webserver etc) support. This uses the Sim390 emulator which is a windows only program for full tcpip networking support however the good news is Sim390 runs perfectly well under "wine" windows7 emulation. MUSIC/SP can also run under hercules but will not have tcpip networking if hercules is used.