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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).

"...access to a mainframe system"....

Well, there is more than one kind of mainframe, and they aren't much alike. But let's assume you really mean IBM zSeries. You have several options:

1) Take a course. Many schools have IBM sponsored classes with access provided.
2) Find a copy of the "Hercules" emulate http://www.hercules-390.org/
3) Sign up for ANY university class to become a "student" and apply to IBM http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/...

Also note the growing popularity of Linux on zSeries systems, so your Linux skills can be directly applied.

There have apparently been a number of JIT'ed versions of hercules http://www.hercules-390.org/.

The only problem is that IBM won't license zos to run on it. So, its a major NO NO for the kinds of companies that are still running mainframe applications.

Worse yet, is that Hercules is actually faster (on a reasonable server) than the base BC series mainframes because of the "capacity on demand" features that result in mainframes running at 1/100th their capacity.

5.5Ghz probably makes it about as fast as a 2 year old intel machine. I should know, I have a z114 (previous generation at 3.8Ghz) that i've done extensive benchmarks on. The fact that IBM refuses to publish standard benchmark numbers (specCPU, specVM, etc) should be sufficient proof that they are not pretty.

I can say that the people buying these things are pretty much smoking some fine IBM drugs. Sure, they are actually fairly competitive (but still not class leading) on the high end, but on the low end, which starts at ~200k, after disks and licenses, for 26 MIPS are abysmal. At that price/performance hercules on a midrange desktop PC doing software emulation (and its not even JIT'ed) runs somewhere between 5-15x as fast.

A 26 MIP mainframe is roughly equal to a Pentium 90. A full blown 3.8 Ghz z114 is roughly equal to a 5 year old x86 server.

Worse yet, is FICON, which generally is just a giant layer of inefficiency sitting in front of standard SCSI/SAS disks. So, the IO numbers are pretty abysmal too.

Basically, you have to spend >$400k before the mainframe catches up to what you can do on your desktop with a free emulator.

If your running linux on z, then your really deluded. In fact, your probably better off taking the HMCs, SEs, and CUs that it comes with and running linux on them directly. The only minor saving grace is that IBM doesn't rape people for unlocked processors to run linux (IFL's).

Further, IBM's claims of easier manageability are a joke. I can install ESXi and a half dozen linux machines, in the time it takes an expert system programmer to setup the HCD, install z/vm, and start configuring a linux machine. Oh, and I can migrate the image with a couple mouse clicks. Plus, I don't have to manage my data stores as a bunch of tiny disk images because zOS still prefers to deal with mod3 (~3GB) and mod9 (~9GB) disk partitions. I literally have a few hundred partitions on a machine with just a couple TB of storage. If you think managing a few dozen vmware disks is a problem, multiply it by 3-8x on z to run linux.

Frankly, if you have cobol, JCL, whatever running on these things and your not desperately trying to migrate to another platform, then your must either be extremely rich, or really stupid. The maintenance costs alone over ten years is going to save 7 figure sums, which should more more than enough to hire a couple programmers and a system administrator to port and maintain the apps on a machine that costs $20k every 5 years.

Otherwise, why would IBM be willing to unleash the Nazgul on the Hercules Emualtor?

Here is a rundown of the mainframe legal landscape.

x86 is the fox in the mainframe henhouse, just like it is with RISC. Just today we hear that Windows is the #1 server OS.

Aren't you glad that you aren't trying to sell a MIPS server right now?

Yes: http://www.hercules-390.org/

But IBM won't allow to run z/OS (the operating system usually used) on it.

Every now and then I'll download and play with one of the "alternative" OSs. The box I'm typing this on (a Mac running Lion) has VMware installs of Haiku, Syllable (what AtheOS evolved in to), Minix, and several flavours of Linux. What next? MVS under Hercules, perhaps?

Technically, Minix is the most interesting. Haiku is the prettiest.

...laura

A few months ago I installed Windows 3.1 in DosBox. If you can get a hold of the installer, it sure is worth it ... for approx. 5 mins. Does bring back a bunch of memories though.

The furthest I've gone back in time is with this: http://www.hercules-390.org/

Every time a story like this is posted, everyone begins reminiscing about the "good ole days" when they had to enter their programs using toggle switches or paper tape.

Fortunately, most of the platforms of old are still around and anytime I get to feeling nostalgic about a particular machine I used to work on, I just fire up one of the many emulators available. After about 10 minutes of playing around with it and the reality of how much dealing with the limitations sucked, I simply shut it down and get back to my current 8Gb Quad-core machine and I'm happy again.

For those of you who haven't checked these out and are feeling nostalgic, here's a few links that may bring back some memories...

http://applewin.berlios.de/ (Apple IIe emulator)
http://www.discover-net.net/~dmkeil/ (Various TRS-80 emulators Model I, III/4, Coco 1,2 & 3)
http://www.altair32.com/index.htm (Greate Altair 8800 emulator - complete with front-panel)
http://www.viceteam.org/ (Various Commodore emulators - C64, C128, VIC20, PET)
http://fms.komkon.org/Speccy/ (Sinclair ZX)

For the greybeards out there
http://www.hercules-390.org/ (IBM System/370/390/z emulator)
http://www.ibmsystem3.nl/emulators.html (IBM System 3 emulator - anyone remember this baby!)

And for the "whitebeards"...
http://members.optushome.com.au/intaemul/Emul1401.htm (IBM 1401 emulator - Autocoder anyone?)


Go ahead, get it out of your system so you can stop pining for the "good ole day", that were, in truth not really as great as they seem in restrospect.

Enjoy...

Fiction: "Concerning IBM, its actions against an 11-year old free and open source software project speak for themselves."

Fact: IBM has not sued Hercules.

Fact: Turbo Hercules - an attempt to monetize the use of Hercules in what appears to be an infringement of IBM's z/OS license, is not Hercules.

Fiction: "Concerning IBM, its actions against an 11-year old free and open source software project speak for themselves."

Fact: IBM has not sued Hercules.

Fact: Turbo Hercules - an attempt to monetize the use of Hercules in what appears to be an infringement of IBM's z/OS license, is not Hercules.

Thanks for your post.
Really this has been turned down by both Groklaw and the Linux Foundation.
For those that don't know this is what TurboHercules wants.
IBM sells z/OS which is a closed source OS with a restrictive license that says you can only run it on an IBM zMachine.
TurboHercules wants IBM to allow customers that buy z/OS to run it on the Hercules emulator.
There is nothing involving the GPL or FOSS here at all except that Hercules runs under Linux and is released under the Q license which is FOSS but not GPL compatible.
Now Neon wants to sell a closed source solution that allows you to off load some zMachine processing to co processors which IBM says violated their z/OS license.
This is massive spin of the highest order.
It has nothing to do with FOSS or patents or anything else.
If you do not want to be stuck running IBM hardware I suggest that people migrate their software to Linux on the zMachine and then they can migrate away from the zMachine to any Linux box on the want.
The company TurboHercules is actually spreading FUD because IBM doesn't want to do things their way.
AKA TurboHercules is using the FOSS community for it's own ends and wrapping it's self in the FOSS flag.
Both Groklaw and the Linux Foundation have said that they are spreading FUD.

BTW http://www.hercules-390.org/ is really a cool program. You can get older IBM mainframe OSs and run them on it and you can even run Linux on it if you want your own IBM mainframe to play with.

TurboHercules SA is a company formed to commercialize the Hercules open-source emulator. The accusations IBM made in its letter apply as much to Hercules as they do to TurboHercules, since the latter simply sells services and support for the emulator.

Yes, Hercules is open source. The QPL is an approved open source license, according to the Open Source Initiative.

Hercules? http://www.hercules-390.org/

I'm a long-time Linux user and even occasional contributor, and most of the development work I do for Hercules is on Linux. My primary desktop and laptop run OS X, though, for one simple reason: they're tools, not toys. I need them to just work when I sit down in front of them to get things done. I find I spend far too much time getting a Linux desktop to that point.

I tell people I'm a Mac user because I'm a Unix geek. OS X, unlike Linux, is a system you can give to your computer-illiterate inlaws and have it be solid and reliable, and not have to spend hours on the phone playing tech support. Being Unix-based, it's far more secure and stable than Windows, too.

So what if it's closed source? It just works, and that matters to me far more.

The NYTimes story on the inquiry mentions that they're also looking at IBM's refusal to license their software to run on the Hercules open source IBM mainframe emulator. It ill be interesting to see if this goes anywhere.

As a followup, how long until we see a netmainframe?

You can have it now! Just run hercules on your netbook:
http://www.hercules-390.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_emulator

No OS seems to simply die off anymore, if you include emulators as well. Even stuff as ancient as operating systems for the DEC PDP-11 http://www.pdp11.org/, or IBM's System/370 http://www.hercules-390.org/ have emulators these days that not only still can run them, but apparently, people still use as well...

VM/CMS is very much alive and well, thank you. It is now known as z/VM and runs on the IBM z series mainframes ...

http://www.vm.ibm.com/

You can even run Linux in z/VM virtual machines now as well as CMS.

There is an emulator available, called Hercules ...

http://www.hercules-390.org/

And an old VM/CMS is available for free, with source ...

http://www.cbttape.org/vm6.htm

Your last paragraph explains why COBOL (or lets say J2EE etc), mainframes are target of generic nerds. People who has never seen or worked with such gigantic data to process and billions of dollars depends on a single computer will never understand why COBOL, Mainframe is still around today.

Wikipedia's Mainframe entries seems to be written by real mainframe people so they give great insight about them, their history and why they can't disappear. In fact, there is even a mainframe emulator around which can even run in Windows (besides *nix of course). http://www.hercules-390.org/

I can bet that COBOL developers reading headline "COBOL" on slashdot didn't even bother to check the comments as they must be sick of people talking about something they have no real life clue about. It is still their fault, they should take it serious and explain why it is not some archaic thing and why a language designed purely for business can't be simply abandoned.

In our business, there is almost guarantee that some professional wannabe guy pops up and try to teach wonders of mpeg-2 recording cameras as we, TV industry are such morons still using Digital Betacam (or even plain, in some cases). There is almost no way to explain why raw, 8, 10, 12 bit data is needed and why it should be on a medium that will last more than 50 years. I guess it is similar case for COBOL/Mainframe scene. Hope no "Dell" server mentioned to them. :)

The new SDK will allow developers to control accessories attached to the dock adapter. I'm really hopeful someone will make a card reader

Or, at least, an IBM parallel channel adapter, so you can hook up one of these card readers. Unfortunately, the iPhone SDK's terms of service would probably disallow a port of Hercules, so you'd need to jailbreak in order to get that classic mainframe experience on the iPhone....

Amen. This is why Hercules is distributed as a .pkg for OS X. I don't want to put Hercules users through the pain of dealing with Fink or MacPorts.

I am planning their destruction, a VM that runs on Intel hardware but responds just like a mainframe, it is software that could be sold for nothing and then all the mainframe apps could be moved to it and IBM would be finished, dead toast.

Check out Hercules. It still hasn't killed the mainframe, though.

Perhaps your organization's problem is not the hardware, but the people. If that's the case, I would suggest that you try to fix that problem first, as that one's a lot more insidious. If you really look at mainframes (absent the people in your organization), you might find that they have their charms.

I don't know if it'll run the current version of MVS/OS390/zOS, but have you seen this?

You can. There's an emulator called Hercules which implements the S/370, ESA/390 and z/390 instruction sets. You still need a copy of the relevant OS to run on it but some of the older IBM mainframe OSes are public domain, and there is an implementation of Linux for the 390 architecture.

Hercules shows that it's possible to emulate hardware that's quite different from the usual PC on a PC-class machine and get reasonable performance out of it. Assuming that the source on the MIT page is complete, it should be possible to work from there, along with whatever hardware docs are available, to emulate enough of the machine to get MULTICS running.

You don't have to emulate the entire machine in every last detail. You only have to emulate those pieces of it that the OS talks to. You can also get away with not emulating the error detection and reporting features of the architecture any more than is required to deal with normal operation; the emulator will not encounter a failing instruction, for example.

The biggest problem in getting it running is much more likely to be getting the software into a form the emulator can execute. There are binary images on the site; if those are enough to bootstrap your way into a running system, then the problem is manageable - you only have to create an emulated disk image that contains the files in the form that MULTICS expects to see. If you have to recreate things from source, you wind up having to build a cross-compiler - a much harder task.

I'd love to see it running. It's possible, but a lot of work. There does seem to be a dedicated MULTICS crowd on the net, and I won't be at all surprised to see them take on the job.

I would suggest for anyone who would like to get a taste of the "IBM Mainframe" computer architecture to try out "hercules"..
Obviously, the emulator is only as good as the underlying hardware (so it may not qualify as a "mainframe" *), but it allows anyone to see for themselves what the whole thing is about..
</ShameLessSelfPromotion>
* Unless of course when one runs the emulator on a linux instance running on a mainframe !

If you want a mainframe, snag http://www.hercules-390.org/ - the zSeries emulator. On current hardware it will run circles around those $500 zSeries boxes.