
The Hercules System/370, ESA/390, and z/Architecture Emulator - shawndumas
http://www.hercules-390.eu/
======
bri3d
Now there's a blast from the past! I'm the "13-year-old 8th grade son" in the
testimonials!

Hercules is pretty neat, and, for a very portable pure emulator, is reasonably
quick as well. I definitely recommend giving MVS 3.8j a spin since it's
readily (and legally) available.

------
aus_
Mainframer here. Hercules is a pretty amazing piece of software. (Fun fact:
One of the main developers, Jay Maynard [1], is also known as the "Tron guy")
Unfortunately, Hercules is as close as the average person can get to the
platform without working for a corporation that runs z/OS (the modern
successor to MVS) or Linux for System z (s390x Linux running on mainframe
hardware) in their shop.

The platform has a big image problem. I personally blame IBM for not
maintaining relationships with their education customers in the early 80s. The
high cost of the hardware drove universities to adopt the new and exciting (ie
cheaper) distributed platforms, and thus breeding a generation of distributed-
minded graduates never even hearing about the mainframe platform except in
history books. I know, because I was one of them.

Now the industry is now facing an exodous of their mainframe experts as most
near retirment. The average age is something like 55-60, ready to retire [2].
There just isn't any young, talented mainframers being educated. IBM has
realized this, and they've started the "IBM Academic Initative" to partner
with schools and incorporate mainframe into their curriculum. It's a start,
but the damage is done.

The technology, however, is top notch. The closed-source software/hardware
model provides a lot of performance gains over the open source model. z/OS is
updated every year and IBM releases new, faster hardware every year. And it's
not always more expensive. An EC10 can consolidate several racks of Linux
blades into its zVM hypervisor (btw IBM has been doing virtualization for 30+
years) while processing 145,000 credit card transactions per second into a
single refrigerator-size machine 24x7x365.

If you are looking for a new career, consider mainframe [3]. It's the backbone
of financial, retail and data processing industries. It may not be as
glamorous, but it's not going anywhere. And when all that old mainframe talent
retires, you can write your own check.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Maynard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Maynard)
[2]: [http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2010-08-03/big-tech-
prob...](http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2010-08-03/big-tech-problem-as-
mainframes-outlast-workforcebusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-
financial-advice) [3]: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2012/01/30/kids-
see-a-f...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2012/01/30/kids-see-a-future-
in-mainframes/?view=pc)

~~~
jacques_chester
Getting into mainframes is damn near impossible without fluking into an
apprenticeship, is the problem.

Taking the IBM courses to fully qualify as a dinosaur herder costs as much as
a computer science degree.

The other problem: kids aren't dreaming of maintaining 360 assembler, COBOL or
PL/I applications.

~~~
yourapostasy
The IBM System z Remote Development Programs (zRDP) [1] costs a little less
than $600 per month, and gives you access to a system sufficiently robust for
learning. I don't know how it would work to have multiple IDs for multiple
people on the same subscription. But if you can trust everyone in a group of
10-20, and work out a shared access schedule, then it can be quite affordable.
You might need to come up with some development project as a stated reason to
join, but that is easy enough.

[1]
[http://dtsc.dfw.ibm.com/MVSDS/%27HTTPD2.ENROL.PUBLIC.SHTML%2...](http://dtsc.dfw.ibm.com/MVSDS/%27HTTPD2.ENROL.PUBLIC.SHTML%28ZOSRDP%29%27)

~~~
t1m
It sounds like if IBM were serious about getting people skilled up on their
platform you'd be able to get access to a system for a bit less than
$600/month. $0/month sounds about what they should be shooting for.

------
DigitalJack
Wow. The tron guy. That's a blast from the past. It takes guts to see your
dream through like that.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Maynard](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Maynard)

------
iuguy
If you can find it, this will also apparently run versions of Z/OS, although
the licensing model for Z/OS doesn't permit it.

~~~
jim02672
z/VM, z/Linux (bare metal or under VM), z/VSE, z/OS, and I believe z/TPF.
That's the newest stuff. It will also emulate 360's. I think the first thing I
ever ran on Hercules was OS/360 MFT! Anyone can legally run VM/370 and MVS
3.8(?) and anything older. Oh ya, MTS, Music/SP, etc. too.

