So if you want to work in this niche, having your own Mainframe will greatly speed up learning the system.
It probably also looks awesome when you market yourself.
So all in all, 25k USD for kickstarting a potentially very profitable career sounds like a bargain ....
Thanks for reading!
I doubt there’s a legit use-case for a mainframe even in business environments. All the “reliability” it gives you can be re-implemented on commodity hardware and still come out ahead compared to the costs of buying & maintaining a mainframe.
On th plus side, we’ve basically moved complexity from hardware to software (it was pioneered by Google, a software company, so no wonder) which increases salaries of software people, at the expense of hardware people. So yay for us I guess.
You're incorrect. The most common one is to run legacy software, and not just banks. Insurance, retail, utilities, financial, manufacturing, etc. Some companies have been around before x86 hit the scene and already had significant investments in their in-house computing infrastructure.
I miss working with it and would like to buy one for my home lab, but the licensing is a killer. I find used ones on the market, but they usually don't include the license keys or media, and without a support contract can't get them.
I really wish IBM had a hobbyist program. I wouldn't expect it be free, but I wouldn't mind paying a small yearly fee.
There's a contest open to students, but anyone can sign up to use these resources.
The response from the service owners was that they weren’t going to switch to a new, unproven methodology. In this case the “new” thing was around since like 1989 (this happened circa 2003). They still use whatever they were using today.
As a new hire, you’re screwed. Anyone getting into mainframes is insane.
It's a $900/year subscription if you go the legit route, and not "approved" to use with Hercules. You're supposed to pay ~$4k for zPDT to be fully legit. Thus, most hobbyist use is pirated torrents of ADCD on Hercules.
The z800/z890 are probably optimal for hobby use even though they are old because they have modest power requirements and are relatively light and not too wide like the z114 which is absolutely massive.
Actually a P/390 (MCA or PCI card), or Multiprise 3000 (deskside hybrid CMOS/PC server thing) would be even easier but those are very very old 31-bit systems at this point. (I also have a R/390 setup and can comment on that if desired)
Now that said, this requires A LOT of dedication to get right. You need to understand at minimum shipping/transport issues, as well as electrical requirements and installation (or be willing to consult someone that can advise you on phase and conversion if necessary).
After that, you definitely need an HMC (a PC used to do things like load the OS) or at least a recovery disk and a lot of patience to set that up in emulation or on other hardware.
And then, you need a FICON (or older ESCON) capable array. Connor Krukosky goes into detail about what it's like without that, and you are extremely limited (basically Linux) in what you can do without FICON. A ds6800 is the easiest way to do that because it is a small rackmount unit, but they are also in demand for that reason. DS8ks are quite cheap all things considered, but serious iron like the frame itself.
And then finally you need some OS media which is also non-trivial to get (although there is or was some "out there" on file sharing).
I am willing to help anyone interested in this kind of thing for fun and preservation of incredible technology and history.
Was $3000 your outlay for the system + the DS6800? Or just the shipping? That is a great find in that case!
I just want to correct a small thing: You need SEs (the frame mounted laptops), you do not actually need an HMC as far as I know. Do you have any information that tells another story? If so I will update the article.
Thanks again!
It's unbelievable how thoroughly Europeans recycle their old computers. I can't find anything.
For the HMC I recall reading this in a manual or hearing it from a mainframe professional but I can't quickly cite it. It may be for some things that a home user doesn't necessarily need, like remote access. Can you access the z/OS System Console from the SEs, that is the only critical thing I can think of.
If you are just curious on the software side at home, Hercules is an amazing project.
For students IBM does a "Master the Mainframe" contest where you can get remote access to an environment and see what it is like as a user and developer.
Finally he can run a personal Minecraft server.
https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/my-raspberry-pi-thinks...
Once you have the basic emulator setup working, check out the Turnkey system below. It's MVS 3.8 so not current Z/OS. If you google around for z/os ADCD, you might find an actual Z/OS CD to try next.
Bit of an understatement, MVS 3.8j was released in 1981.
It's more like the difference between SysV and Linux, or Windows NT and modern Windows. Major differences and lots of features in the newer stuff, but for first principles it'll do.
Like I said, if you want modern(ish) Z/OS, ADCD is your best bet.
The main company I’ve heard of doing this is MicroFocus, they have all the dev tooling for it for the major IDEs, compilers, etc.
One of the main things that complicates the problem, again as I understand it, is that there is no official COBOL spec. There are several versions from several vendors, but compilers have to account for mainframe hardware bugs, so there are many different targets that have to be supported. Most companies want a different, specific, set of compiler features.
If I recall correctly they were running SuSE Linux with Websphere App for management and DB2 storing all of the configuration information.
I hadn't heard they traced their linage back to the shark. That surprises me a bit because we had several of those and they were very reliable. Though thinking about it that makes sense.
Hopefully the later software fixed the reliability problems. I got rid of all of ours in about 2010 or so. Replaced them DS5000 on the Open Systems side (which had their own set of problems), and DS8000s on the Mainframe side. The DS8000 was pretty rock solid.
Are they simply like a big computer?
That OS is… something: https://medium.com/@bellmar/hello-world-on-z-os-a0ef31c1e87f
It was a great read though and I'd probably buy one as well if I had the money, time, and space. They seem like underrated machines.
What kind of problems do you hope to solve? Are there anything in particular you will use it for?
