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The Hercules emulator will emulate an IBM z system on your PC. Now, any IBM mainframe software that's not decades old is copyright and basically impossible for an ordinary Joe to get for an emulator. But in the 60s and 70s, IBM released much of their system software free, figuring to make money on the hardware. You can get an MVS turnkey system for Hercules built with the last free version of MVS (3.8j). You get an assembler (G--H and HLASM were licensed program products) and TSO (not ISPF or SDSF, though. You do get a homebrew replacement which seems to be markedly inferior). No CICS or DB2. You don't get PL/I, FORTRAN or COBOL, but you can install old versions of these (no Checkout or Optimizing compiler for PL/I, but PL/I-F was free and you can find install tape images). I've got it installed on my Linux laptop, and it was a blast seeing the operator console come up in the x3270 session (I was an MVS operator for many years).

I hear it runs Cygwin [winehq.org] so there's that.

Yeah, but will it run Hercules under Cygwin under WINE under Linux?

If I had an x86 emulator that ran under zLinux, I could run Hercules under Cygwin under WINE under Linux under x86 emulation under zLinux on a System z. Then I'd really have something.

I think I last used WINE around 1995. It worked for a few things. Since then I've gone to running the preinstalled Windows as host OS and running Linux in a VM, because I'm too lazy to back up the Windows installation and switch to booting Linux as the host. But as Win7 goes out of support I'll probably switch back to native-Linux machines, at least for personal use, and then it might be worth checking WINE out again.

I was favouring OS/360 myself. He sounded like he wanted a challenge.

That's a bit dated. I'd suggest MVS 3.8 myself...
http://www.bsp-gmbh.com/turnkey/

The biggest problem with this kind of machines isn't the hardware but to find people that are willing to work with them and learn the quirks in operating systems that has a legacy since the 60's. Not that all is bad, some is actually good, but they require a completely different way of thinking.

By the way - are there any anonymous FTP MVS (or heritage of MVS) servers around anymore. Just out of curiosity...

For those that wants to play around there is an emulator available called Turnkey.

Or is it that people in IT generally suck???

Yes. Most, probably 3/4, of the ones I have met needed a training class or a prepackaged software tool to do their jobs (and then a training class to use the tool of course :). And after all the training classes, they still suck. They expect to be 'held by the hand' with everything.

No initiative, no imagination, no innovation. They got into technology because it was a job opportunity, not because they actually had interest or aptitude in the field.

A good nerd (the term 'Geek' is oh so trendy these days) will stay at home Friday and Saturday nights reading, hacking and taking online courses. A good nerd will download hercules http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules/ and turnkey http://www.bsp-gmbh.com/turnkey/index.html hit the news groups, amazon and teach themselves mainframes. Nerds do not fear technology but rather embrace it.

(in fact I applied for a mainframe job, similar to one I had about 10 years ago, and have been using hercules/turnkey to brush up my skills. I have an interview in a few days).

Having worked and constatly retrained on Windows systems, Unices, mainframes, Oracle, Sql Server, PERL, Java, C#, COBOL, Postgresql etc. I am pretty much convinced that I have an 'iron rice bowl'. There is nothing anyone can throw at me that I cannot learn.

Sorry about the ranting, you hit a nerve.

Unfortunatly, the massive cost of liscencing the MVS (OS/390, zOS) operating systems means there is no way that a normal user can run a PC based mainframe. IBM employees can do it, of course.

You can't run the current version of the OS without paying big money (or having the right connections and agreements), but you can run older versions, fortunately.

For instance, you can get MVS 3.8J for free. There's even a prebuilt distribution of it for use with Hercules available. The main page is here, and the ISO image can be downloaded from Jay Maynard's PD software page (the turnkey site's links to downloadable images no longer work).

There are other operating systems, e.g. VM/370, which are also freely available.

I've used the Turnkey MVS project to learn a ton about mainframes, and have a 3270 console staring at me right now. Invaluable tool for learning abou the 'guts', algthough the new and sexy stuff (ie: ISPF/SDSF) aren't there. You should check it out though...

Turnkey MVS

Yeah, the hercules is great, even better though is the Tur(n)key system where you can find an mvs system to run atop of the herc. They've done a pretty good job of packaging it, so the install will set up all the DASD and create an ipl volume for you.

Personally, I run MVS 3.8j, which was IBM's flagship operating system circa 1974.

Here you go:

Turnkey MVS System

It includes MVS 3.8J, the last version of MVS that could be freely distributed, and a copy of Hercules, the 390 emulator for Intel boxes. Hercules can run under Linux or Windows.

If anyone out in Slashdotland wants to play with a mainframe, this is pretty darn close.

Another good reference is here

In a more geekie manner; there is Kraftwerk. Difficult to grasp, very cold at first but if you dig a little bit into it, you will find it pretty warm. Personnaly, I find the album Computer World a excellent start, and if you code, you will find the lyrics pretty funny like : It's more fun to compute or I program my home computer, Beam my self into the future. It's kind of cool to listen to that and making a modification in a Makefile ... Very powerful album. I find it kind of cool of acting like a robot and listening to kraftwerk. Everything at it's right place.

If you are more in a texture mode, check out Board of Canada. You can think of a weird 8mm film of the '70 put into music. Great for Cobol and Mainframe programming.

If your are on Visual Basic and you are frustrated, you can put Neu !/Neu ! 2. It's rock from the '70, but the beat is sooo techno... still ahead of it's time... It has influence so many artists.

In something more funky, check Mouse On Mars. It's very noisy, but still have the genius to put the melody into it. The music to listen with Python or Perl.

As for the documentation, Fennesz [Endless Summer] is great ambiant music. Acoustic guitar put into small repeated samples. So beautiful that you will forget that you are making documentation. This is the next logical step to Eno.

To learn more about electronic music, the The Wire is a excellent source...