On Wed, Mar 26, 2025 at 10:49 AM, Berry van Sleeuwen wrote:
There are some manuals at but to reach them you need to know the exact filename (pdf) to get access. When you go to this exact url you get an error, and certainly no listing of all available files. So it's hard to say if the VM/ESA manuals are in there.
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I think all the ESA documents have been removed.. Following the link from the product announcement page gives a 404
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A few years ago there was a website that provided an active bookmanager but he got a take-down request from IBM, IBM stated that it's proprietary content was available on the IBM website. Well, maybe back then, but certainly not anymore. All IBM Bookmanager websites have been shutdown in recent years, or at least the bookmanager application is no longer available. Publibz used to host such environment. At least I'm glad I still have my old bookmanager files available, that includes all VM/ESA 2.x manuals. If you manage to get hold of an old documention CD that will include the bookmanager files. PDF versions of the publications is more recent, I have some PDF versions of VM/ESA 2.4 but not from earlier versions, that's all .BOO.
I know of at least one site with .BOO files. The Library Reader for Windows and later Softcopy Reader which reads these is still downloadable from the IBM web site
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https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/ibm-softcopy-reader-windows-v40-0
Apart from Bitsavers I don't know if there is any easy accessable material available.
There once was an IBM utility to manage these, but it seems to have vanished. The book files seem to have vanished.
For general VM manuals you might take a look at the official IBM VM Libarary page. In Indexed pdf's at there is a zip file with the old z/VM 5.4 documentation. Indeed while not ideal, most of it is also applicable for VM/ESA. Obviously z/VM has a lot of new features that is not included in VM/ESA but it does help.
Regards, Berry.
Op 26-03-2025 om 05:31 schreef Zachary Kline via groups.io:
Hi All,
I guess this question probably comes up a lot, but here we go again. :)
I wondered if anyone had a good source for VM/ESA era manuals they could point me to? I've looked on Bitsavers but there doesn't seem to be much.
I'm mostly interested in ESA because it seems both relatively easy to run on Hercules and likely to have manuals in original electronic format. The latter is particularly helpful for me as a totally blind user. OCR is not ideal.
I know a lot of things used to be available from IBM, but they seem to move around a lot or vanishh without much fanfare.
I'm particularly looking for electronic copies of any tutorial material, the general information manuals, concepts, and so on. I'm very new to mainframes as a hobby, though have a slight acquaintance with MVS and its ilk.
Thanks much :)
Best,
Zack.
P.S. I did find a thread earlier which linked to a giant Internet Archive directory, but that interface is absurd and I have no idea how to find anything in particular using the big table.
