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…
Files(n) in MVS38J
Preface Using the Hercules hardware emulator to run MVS 3.8J declares various files on your PC OS (e.g. Windows, Linux) file system such as MVS DASD devices, communication devices, MVS printer output, MVS logs, and punched output. A Hercules configuration file may contain the following unit-record devices as depicted in the below sample snippet: . . # Card Readers 000C…
BrowserLog in MVS38J
Preface Using the Hercules emulator to host MVS 3.8J requires real-time interaction with each system including host OS (i.e. Windows, Linux, etc.). A typical interactive setup may include: This post is a short communication for awareness purposes which outlines an alternative console log using a web browser immediately available via Hercules in tk4- and tk5 base distributions. Hercules Console Per…