Overview Several years ago, I experimented with the Shared DASD device functionality offered by the Hercules Emulator software v3.07 and v3.13. I quickly setup two separate Hercules instances sharing one DASD device following the Hercules Shared Device topics in the Hercules User Reference . Consequently, I moved away from that ‘project’ to another before completing and documenting! Today, using multiple…
Personal DSMON in MVS38J
Overview One day, while reviewing output from the ISPF VTOC Utility add-on, option V (=3.7.V in TK5), with my userid HLQ as the DSN search argument, a numerous set of datasets were listed! Some resulting from manual testing. Others from applications… At this juncture, I realized an alert-type process (aka personal dataset monitor) could be a handy tool to peak…
MVS38J Software Contributions
Software contributions to the MVS 3.8J enthusiasts and hobbyists community are listed below in chronological order with most current announcement at top. Also, current development workload in progress is listed for awareness purposes to be published and announced at a later date. This post serves as an archive of announcements. Dates are in the format MM/DD/CCYY or monthname-day-ccyy. Thanks,Larry Belmontes…
User-Wide Software in TK5
Overview Corrections applied to step 4 under Implement User-Wide level on TK5 section. Installation of third-party and/or in-house (home-grown) software is ‘normal business’ in computing platforms, regardless of technology stacks. Additionally, safekeeping of user software and/or customization after an OS upgrade is paramount. However, keeping this impact to ‘zero’ is nearly impossible! Therefore, some form of exception is necessary by…
KICKS in TK5
Overview KICKS is a transaction processing system enabling execution of CICS programs directly under TSO and provides a high level of source code compatibility with CICS. Compilers supported (not an exhaustive list) include MVT COBOL and MVS GCC. KICKS is owned and authored by Mike Noel. Complete information on this product available at http://www.kicksfortso.com/ Installing KICKS on TK5 is as…
GGUESS in KICKS
Overview KICKS is a transaction processing system for CMS and TSO enabling execution of CICS programs directly under TSO and provides a high level of source code compatibility with CICS. Compilers supported (not an exhaustive list) include MVT COBOL and MVS GCC. KICKS is owned and authored by Mike Noel. Complete information on this product available at http://www.kicksfortso.com/ This post…
Pretty-TERMSIZE in MVS38J
Overview ISPF v.2.2 (ISPF-like product from Wally Mclaughlin) provides two specific Z-variables to expose terminal size, ZSCREEND and ZSCREENW, screen depth and screen width, respectively. Each variable is 4-bytes, zero-filled. For example, to display terminal size on a panel (e.g. primary menu, ISP@PRIM), one row (line) could be defined in the )BODY section as shown below: 1 2 3 4…
PRTSCR in MVS 3.8J
Overview PRTSCR – ISPFv2.2 Print Screen Utility(current version 0.9.01 2025-02-08) ISPF v2.2 (ISPF-like product from Wally Mclaughlin) does not include a print screen function (i.e. PRINT, PRINT-HI) as provided by the IBM ISPF product. ISPF maintains several system Z-variables for developer use. Some Z-type variables for screen information include ZSCREENW (screen width, e.g. 80), ZSCREEND (screen depth, e.g. 24) and…
GGUESS in MVS38J
GGUESS – Number Guessing Game across technology stacks from PC BASIC to MVS 3.8J TSO / ISPF / KICKS /Hercules to HTML JavaScript(current version 0.9.00 2024-05-01) One of my first programs to write (during the late 1970’s) was a number guessing game using interactive BASIC interpreters on the Altair 8800 and TRS-80 Model I microcomputers (Intel 8080 CPU). The program…
Spool+1 in MVS38J
Preface JES2 (Job Entry System 2) is the spooling package distributed with MVS 3.8J to queue manage (schedule) job in-take, route and/or hold printer and punch output. JES2 is a principal component of MVS. The following manuals, at minimum, should be referenced whether following up on MVS / JES2 functionality, modifying JES2 or Hercules configuration: The above external links are…