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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.

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.

Apart from Bitsavers I don't know if there is any easy accessable material available.

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.

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.


--
Zachary Kline
zkline@...

On Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 05:27 PM, Fish Fish wrote:

As far as I know, Jay's Aethra is supposed to be identical to a current SDL 4.x Hyperion version of Hercules, but without many of the modern more advanced z/Architectural features that newer more modern "z" operating systems need/require, but which older legacy operating systems such as VM/370 R6 have no need for, thus making it slightly faster than SDL 4.x Hyperion. (How much faster, I have no idea. I've never bothered to try measuring it.)

All these responses are useful. Thanks! As I don't have any need for "z" operating systems, nor licenses, I'll probably go Aethra. Speed isn't really an issue for me, but I always lean toward lighter weight systems if I have a choice.

My old shop was a 370/148 when I started, and a 4300 series when I left.

Excellent hosting and configuration advice, I wasn't aware of the helper.

Thanks again all,

Troy.

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On 3/21/2025 8:18 PM, Mark A. Stevens via groups.io wrote:

Hi folks!
If you don't know what it stands for, you are only an acronym behind me:? Interactive Problem Control System.
Did anyone ever use IPCS?

Yes, I did use IPCS when I was working on these systems.

Does anyone still use IPCS?

I don't WORK on them anymore. I might use IPCS if I start PLAYING with these systems again.

Do we need IPCS?

I think Amdahl had its own dump analysis program (ANALYZE ?). If that is available, I would look at that.

?... Mark S.

Tom Kern

On 03.18.2025 10:50, Zane Healy via groups.io wrote:

My preference for running something like Hercules or SIMH is a Virtual Machine running on an older x86 box with Linux installed. Log in, start up ’screen’ and then start up the emulator. I’ve used a Raspberry Pi for Multics and MVS in the past, but find Virtual Machines to be more convenient. I prefer to run OpenSUSE on the VM, but have also used Ubuntu and Red Hat.

100% agree. I always use Debian for servers and have switched to tmux
instead of screen, but yes, this is how I run all of my Hercules and
simh instances -- Debian VM on my VM server with tmux sessions for each
Hercules (MVS 3.8 / VM/370 / etc) listening on a different console port.

Question, has anyone looked at using Proxmox for this?? I’m looking to migrate my home lab off of ESXI, due to the cost.

Yes. Early this year I made the switch to Proxmox on my VM servers after
a decade of ESXi. Very happy with it.

ONE IMPORTANT TIP, though: I always set the VM CPU to "host" instead of
the default (x86-64-v2-AES) when creating new VMs. I don't have a
cluster of Proxmox servers where I need to worry about live-migrating
VMs between hosts with different CPU models, so it always seemed like a
good idea to me to just pass through the real CPU to VMs instead of
having QEMU fake a specific CPU.

It turns out the *one* VM I accidentally forgot to set the CPU to "host"
when I created it was my mainframe VM that runs all of my Hercules
instances. I was having an intermittent problem where my MVS 3.8
instance wouldn't IPL -- it just hung forever shortly after the IPL
started. No Hercules crash, no errors...just stopped making forward
progress. After a lot of troubleshooting, I eventually realized the VM
CPU was set to x86-64-v2-AES, not "host". I changed the CPU model of
the VM to "host". Sure enough, the intermittent IPL problem went away!
Hercules has been reliable again after I made that change.

-Matthew

Dave Wade wrote:

[...]

To me this is more "bloatware" with feature such as IEEE
floating point, 31 & 64 bit code, various network interfaces
and pile of other stuff I don't use.

I understand perfectly. In fact, this so called "bloatware" issue that SDL 4.x Hyperion currently suffers from with respect to older legacy operating systems (which I honestly believe is a rather unfair characterization of the issue) is what I believe ultimately compelled Jay Maynard to create Aethra in the first place. (Jay? True?)

Jay wanted a more modern version of Hercules with the all of the known 3.x bugs fixed, but without all of the code necessary to support all of the features and functionality that legacy operating systems didn't really need. Essentially, he wanted a SDL Hercules 4.x Hyperion "Light" version of Hercules designed exclusively for older legacy operating systems (i.e. a "bloatware-free" version of SDL Hercules 4.x Hyperion). (Jay? Yes?)

I would really like a smaller lighter Hercules for use with
legacy operating systems..

Have you tried Jay's Aethra? Because I believe that was one of his goals -- if not his *primary* goal -- with creating Aethra.

Your choice.

(but I know which one *I* would personally prefer!)

Yes but you aren't running 370 code on a PI.

Correct.

And I'm also not running legacy operating systems either. I'm running modern "Z" operating systems, largely because there is a rather large non-insignificant demand for such a version of Hercules.

If I was an ordinary Hercules user instead of a Hercules developer, I would probably prefer the same version of Hercules that you are preferring, but without the bugs. In other words, I would probably be running Aethra for my heavily modified personally customized version of DOS/VS (and VM/SP 5 if I could ever find a copy).

p.s. You still haven't "irked" me yet, but you seem to be heading in that direction! ;-)

--
"Fish" (David B. Trout)
Software Development Laboratories

mail: fish@...

On 19/03/2025 21:27, Fish Fish via groups.io wrote:

Dave Wade wrote:

BlameTroi wrote:

[...]

I'm wanting to rebuild my first serious shop in my home:
VM hosting DOS/VS. I see that there are Hercules Aethra
and SDL Hercules versions. Is there any reason to prefer
one over the other for running VMCE?

I don't believe for any of the 370 based OSs such as VM/370 R6
which is the base for VM/CE there is any difference. In fact
at the risk of irking Jay and Fish I would say that on a PI
one of the 3.X releases might work better as they are a little
lighter.

While it's true that the older 3.x releases of Hercules are certainly faster than the SDL 4.x Hyperion releases, they are also buggier, failing to pass more than one of SDL Hyperion's Quality Assurance tests, producing either incorrect results or outright crashing. I would personally not recommend using it for that simple reason alone.

As far as I know, Jay's Aethra is supposed to be identical to a current SDL 4.x Hyperion version of Hercules, but without many of the modern more advanced z/Architectural features that newer more modern "z" operating systems need/require, but which older legacy operating systems such as VM/370 R6 have no need for, thus making it slightly faster than SDL 4.x Hyperion. (How much faster, I have no idea. I've never bothered to try measuring it.)


So, to summarize:


* 3.x: buggy. Not personally recommended.

* Aethra: same(?) as SDL 4.x but without the
unneeded modern z/Arch features, and thus
*possibly* faster than SDL 4.x Hyperion.
(But its speed advantage(?) -- if any --
has never been measured as far as I know.)

* SDL 4.x Hyperion: the most current up to date
and recommended version of Hercules designed
for BOTH modern z/Arch operating systems AND
older legacy operating systems as well, but
slower than Hercules 3.x. (Not sure about
Aethra as I never bothered to measure it.)


So you have to ask yourself: Which would you personally prefer?

To more quickly arrive at *possibly* the wrong answer? (3.x)

Is the 370 emulation really buggy if you disable the assists?

Or to more slowly and more confidently arrive at the right answer? (SDL and probably Aethra as well)

To me this is more "bloat ware" with feature such as IEEE floating point , 31 & 64 bit code, various network interfaces and pile of other stuff I don't use.
I would really like a smaller lighter Hercules for use with legacy operating systems..

Your choice.

(but I know which one *I* would personally prefer!)

Yes but you aren't running 370 code on a PI.
Dave

Dave Wade wrote:

BlameTroi wrote:

[...]

I'm wanting to rebuild my first serious shop in my home:
VM hosting DOS/VS. I see that there are Hercules Aethra
and SDL Hercules versions. Is there any reason to prefer
one over the other for running VMCE?

I don't believe for any of the 370 based OSs such as VM/370 R6
which is the base for VM/CE there is any difference. In fact
at the risk of irking Jay and Fish I would say that on a PI
one of the 3.X releases might work better as they are a little
lighter.

While it's true that the older 3.x releases of Hercules are certainly faster than the SDL 4.x Hyperion releases, they are also buggier, failing to pass more than one of SDL Hyperion's Quality Assurance tests, producing either incorrect results or outright crashing. I would personally not recommend using it for that simple reason alone.

As far as I know, Jay's Aethra is supposed to be identical to a current SDL 4.x Hyperion version of Hercules, but without many of the modern more advanced z/Architectural features that newer more modern "z" operating systems need/require, but which older legacy operating systems such as VM/370 R6 have no need for, thus making it slightly faster than SDL 4.x Hyperion. (How much faster, I have no idea. I've never bothered to try measuring it.)


So, to summarize:


* 3.x: buggy. Not personally recommended.

* Aethra: same(?) as SDL 4.x but without the
unneeded modern z/Arch features, and thus
*possibly* faster than SDL 4.x Hyperion.
(But its speed advantage(?) -- if any --
has never been measured as far as I know.)

* SDL 4.x Hyperion: the most current up to date
and recommended version of Hercules designed
for BOTH modern z/Arch operating systems AND
older legacy operating systems as well, but
slower than Hercules 3.x. (Not sure about
Aethra as I never bothered to measure it.)


So you have to ask yourself: Which would you personally prefer?

To more quickly arrive at *possibly* the wrong answer? (3.x)

Or to more slowly and more confidently arrive at the right answer? (SDL and probably Aethra as well)

Your choice.

(but I know which one *I* would personally prefer!)

--
"Fish" (David B. Trout)
Software Development Laboratories

mail: fish@...

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I am running 6 old OS'ses on a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8G - including Multics. All over Tmux and ssh tunnels. Working great.