Running a mainframe on your laptop (for fun and profit)
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:05
Oh, I'm up. Yeah. Okay. Hello, everybody. Hello. Okay. So, this is an experiment for me. I do a lot of talks. I love doing talks on several subjects.
00:21
Actually, this one is two years old by now. And I even have a new slide with a scoop for a new project that I'm starting. But that's at the end, if you're still awake, then. Okay. So, let's start with the experiment. I can introduce myself in a high impact way and in a low impact way.
00:43
Trust me. So, the first question is, you have to make a choice by raising your hands. Whether it's high or low impact. Who is in favor of a low impact? Okay. Who is in favor of a high impact?
01:01
Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. But it's an introduction, right? It tells you really something about me. At the end, I'll probably ask you if I overdid it. And I should never do it again. Right? So, keep that in mind. I'll ask you later.
01:21
And it keeps you all awake, right? That's also a benefit. Oh, sorry. Okay. Yep. Now I have to click on this one. Yeah. That's it. Okay. I'm a father of five. And I have three girls. My wife has two girls.
01:41
Together, for those numerical challenges, that's five. And as you can see, it's not a standard family. One of them is actually single, so if you're a nice guy. But you get me as a father-in-law.
02:01
You know, I'm the kind of guy with T-shirts like, Ten rules for dating your daughter. With one being get a job. You know, that's me. And my girls hate me for it. Oh, no, dad. No. Yeah, of course they do. Okay. I've been a firefighter for ten years. A few pictures of me saving a dog.
02:20
This is my helmet. This part was melted. It was an exercise, and it was hot, and it was great fun. But yeah, I had a melted helmet. I do something with boy scouting. I combine that with firefighting. This is an event in the Netherlands with 5,000 scouts every four years.
02:42
I'm author of several books. I'm now working on my ninth, so this is just something to get you through. And I'm a caretaker, and that's where you see some pictures that sort of represent the impact that it has on my life.
03:02
Oh, by the way, I'm also the LibreRent project leader. That's the logo up there. It's an open-source project. So that was the high-impact slide. And now the question, because I don't want to commercialize on a SAP story.
03:23
So it's an honest question. Should I do it again, or shouldn't I? Who's in favor that I should do this again? Not today. Good. Okay. Thank you. This helps me, you know. Okay, so this is the low-impact, boring,
03:41
and I'm also a member of the Angry Nerds podcast team in the Netherlands. We do it in Dutch, and great fun, by the way. What do I do? Remote systems management, you know, some consultancies, some training, and I write my main project and web-based project management. Very cool.
04:01
Are there people in the audience who are native English? They come from the UK. One, two, three, four. Don't have to be really reluctant, you know. We all know what happened, you know. Okay, so for the real British people under us in our community,
04:23
the Dutch speak English, but we do everything literally. So this is a translation table. If a British guy says, with all due respect, he means, I think you're wrong, but I hear, oh, he's respecting me, you've got a nice dialogue going, you know.
04:41
So it's not that I want to be impolite, it's just that I don't understand the intricacies of the real English culture. Okay, what's a mainframe? Let's get to the subject. Mainframe basically is massive hardware parallelization. So what they do is you have a computer with a CPU,
05:01
and you try to offload the boring tasks as much as possible to dedicated hardware. That's it. They've been around since the 50s, and they're still around. And this is just, you know, you've got your processors, but if you want to store something, it goes to storage control, and that takes care of the rest, main storage.
05:22
Or it says, no, go to control unit from the storage control to devices, or tapes, whatever, but it's offloaded from a processor. So the processor can focus on what's it really good at, being some simple calculation. Now, this is not, I repeat, not a supercomputer,
05:40
because a supercomputer, it's all about doing as fast as possible as many calculations as possible. And that's for mathematical models, you know, weather models, analyzing what's happening in the world, global warming analysis, for instance. This is just throughput, getting data as quickly as possible from A to B.
06:06
In a banking system, you've got millions of customer records, and they all, every day, they get a very small interest. Well, you used to get interest on a savings, right? But in those days, it's like, okay, we've got millions of records,
06:20
they all got, every day, a single piece of interest added to it. So all those records, every night, go through the system, calculate it, store it, done. There's nothing mathematically challenging about it, but it's just throughput, massive data throughput. Now, what's Hercules? Hercules is a mainframe emulator.
06:42
Maybe you know of QEMU, KVM, Hyper-V, VirtualBox, whatever, whatnot, platforms where you can virtualize hardware. This is one that virtualizes a mainframe. It supports System 370, ESA 390, and a 64-bit, Z-bit architecture.
07:04
And it runs on Linux Windows, allows for, well, you can read what it all says. How does it look? Well, this is an actual front panel of an IBM 360, and this is sort of, well, this is the GUI, you know, with the rotary dials and sort of a console in there,
07:20
and here the hardware configuration for this particular instance of a mainframe, because you have several options, you know, how many hard disks do you have, how much memory do you have, whatever, whatever. And so you configure the hardware for this particular mainframe to run.
07:40
What does it do? Well, it runs software. Many OSes are in the public domain. They're old, but they're in the public domain. If you have a license and the hardware from IBM, you've got an IBM license for something and the hardware combined, then you may also run that software on Hercules,
08:00
because they've already sold the hardware. Well, most of us don't have the hardware. Actually, that brings me up. There was a point in time where I got the option to buy a hardware, really, really cheap, with a mainframe, and it was a cute, small system about a cubic meter of metal, and it looked really high-tech.
08:21
And I went to my wife, and that's the only time she said no. And trust me, because I also collect AS400s, and I have seven. And I thought that would be nice, you know, in the living room, put a vase on it with some flowers.
08:41
I had a son into my room, and my mother had me threw away. Yeah, it's... Okay, so if you don't have the hardware, like I do, you can use our 360.360.vm MVS. We're going into that later on. VM, 370, TSS, and Linux.
09:01
So you can have run Linux on a Hercules mainframe emulator on Linux. I don't know why, but it's possible. Now, what not to do, because this presentation came forth out of my frustration looking into this. So I'm going to tell you everything I did wrong,
09:22
so you can hopefully do it better, and at least don't have to experience my frustration. Don't Google Hercules Project, because it will get you to Hercules-390.org, and at the bottom it will say, last update 2010.
09:42
And you think, that project, right? Wrong. Followed, and if you then go to there, and you follow the site, you come to some Jay Maynard. And there's an easy start mentioned. Focus MVS 3.8 Jay, turnkey system version 3.
10:00
And there's even an email for Jay Maynard. Don't do this. But it's there, and it's an easy mistake. A long time, I thought this guy was deceased, because I mailed him, no reply at all. And then I found this, Eric Raymond has a project, an open source UPS hardware software,
10:25
and the wiki says this, Jay Maynard, in the people list. He's alive! Now, you make up your own mind about this next thing. Because on May 1st, there was an email, I ain't dead.
10:43
And I may not be involved in Hercules anymore, but I haven't gone anywhere. But he runs the old website, .org. He has admin for the mailing list on Yahoo, with 7,000 members. But he's not interested.
11:02
He doesn't do anything anymore about Hercules. So nobody can administer the mailing list. Nobody can administer the original website. So if you didn't know better, you think, oh, it's a dead project. So make up your own mind what you think about this.
11:23
Well, what you should do, go to the same site, but .eu. Should I make the joke or not? Yeah, even if you're British. Sorry, had to be done.
11:43
The main list is Hercules 390 at Yahoo groups. It's got 7,000 members. Easy starters, MVS, G3A, Turnkey, 4 dash. Not 3, but 4 dash. There is a new release. With some URLs. I will put the slide, well, they are already online, but anyway.
12:01
And you can start learning. Moshix is somebody who has made a lot of videos on YouTube, explaining to you how this system works. And you can start working with it. What do you need? A PC with Linux or Windows. I know, it's possible. Raspberry Pi even.
12:20
A free 3270 terminal emulator. Because that's a protocol that you need to talk to a mainframe. But it's already in the Linux repositories for years. So no problem there. Hercules software. I would advise to download that Turnkey system, because it's a zip file. You unzip it and you've got everything.
12:41
You've got Hercules, latest release. You've got MVS installed. You've got boot scripts, etc. It's very easy to get. Actually, when I did this talk at OCHKAMP in the UK, August 2018, somebody in the audience did it while I was talking. And later on the podcast said, yeah, I did it while I was talking.
13:01
And actually, whatever I said actually made sense and it worked. Who knew? Okay, Hercules and some operating system distribution. Now this is a very small mainframe. A Pi Zero. Smaller than the original manual.
13:21
Lingo to understand. These are the words that are used in the mainframe community that you don't see outside of it. DESD. Direct Attached Storage Device. Hard disk. Right?
13:41
TSO. Time Sharing Option. Makes it multi-user. So you could have a mainframe without TSO. And you would have a really, really expensive single-user system. JES2 is a job entry system. Willy Stewart. There's also a JES3 in the release, or almost in the release.
14:00
I don't know. But it's for queuing jobs, because that's what you do. You submit a job. It gets into a queue. At some point it's... Sorry, what? I don't know. Because actually this is a subject I know nothing about.
14:21
Really, it is. I'm not a mainframe expert. So I advise you to look into that. I'm a Linux guy. I've been in Linux for 20 years. And I came across this and I found this interesting. So this is one of those talks that I should start with. I'm going to do a talk about something I know nothing about.
14:41
There are kicks from then to transactional software. The dataset is created assigned space for stuff. Which means if you want to do something on a mainframe, you first go to the sysadmin and you request a dataset. And then that dataset gets a name. 15. Okay, thanks. The dataset gets a name.
15:01
And in that dataset you can make files and data and do your stuff. But it has a fixed size. So you can never cross the border of the fixed size dataset. Which is a very easy, old but easy and simple way of volume management. So it cannot be a convenient one?
15:20
Yes. And the catalog is a system list of available stuff. So if you add software to it, you also have to edit the catalog to make sure that it knows that the new application is available. If you know these terms and know what they mean, you can fiddle around with a system like that. What you will see, this is a terminal session to a TK4 dash.
15:45
And you've got to log on. This is back in the day when security was, shall I say non-existent? Because you can do user ID slash password. And everybody can read the password. But you can also do user ID enter and then the password is hidden.
16:03
So yeah, they really did some modernization. After login, this is the menu you're presented with. And you select an option. And normally I would give a demo, but we don't have the time to do that now. But some things you need to know.
16:23
This is the position where you need to enter the menu choice. If you are outside of that position, the terminal itself will lock up because it doesn't understand what you're doing. Because it's a screen-oriented communication. You enter something in the screen, you send the data to the mainframe.
16:42
He does something and he sends you a screen back with masks. Yeah, that's a good term to explain that. So if you do that and you lock up your screen, no worries, there's a reset button. Just press the reset button, it won't reboot your mainframe. It'll just unlock the status of your terminal and give you a new shot to enter the choice over there.
17:06
Now the other thing is you need to know a few function keys. The F3 is back. So if I select option 1 to go into submenu 1. If I want to go one level up, F3.
17:20
And the other thing is there were no page up, page down keys on the terminal keyboard. So they used F7 and F8. If you can remember those three, you're fine. Together of course with the reset button. OK, demo time. Don't have the time. Performance. OK, comparing an i7 processor to a real IBM ZZ14.
17:46
That's a really recent mainframe. This is our TK4 minus. Let's say first test 350 million instructions per second.
18:02
This is the one for a real mainframe. 5 billion. Almost 6 billion instructions per second. So it's a little bit faster. Now if somebody can do the calculation about the factor. But I'll help you. This is just about, you know, it's not an exact science.
18:20
Not that much. It's not exactly. It's a machine that costs millions of years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can run this on your laptop. Actually, I think this is a laptop. Anyway, update. In April, two years ago, he had 61 video. He made the system available. So you can send it to his login request.
18:43
And he has a virtual machine with this stuff. And you can connect to that. So if you don't want to install it on your own, you can request a login. I also asked the mailing group list for how old are you. And I got 7,000 people. You know, I got about 30 responses. It's not a lot, but it gives you some statistics.
19:02
Average age, 62.6. The others were writing on paper. So, if you remember the title of my talk, running a mainframe on your laptop for fun and profit. Well, the fun part, I think I've clearly explained it.
19:21
Now, the profit part is, they are going to retire. And this is a low-level way of familiarizing yourself with how a mainframe works. Albeit a system from 1972, but nevertheless, a mainframe. Conceptually, nothing much has changed.
19:43
And then you can apply for a job. And believe me, they love to see you. Because people knowing how to program COBOL... Ten minutes. Ah, easy. People knowing how to program COBOL, even if they learned it on Hercules,
20:01
you get a job for a very nice hourly rate. There's a company in the Netherlands who says, we'll hire you, give you a job, then we will train you in two weeks, and then we'll put you at a bank to do some work. So, if you don't have any computer knowledge, you can still get a job there.
20:24
Okay, playing with the hardware. Silly me. Suppose I want to hook up a real terminal to Hercules. I asked that in the mailing group. And the terminal uses coax cable. So, somebody said, oh yeah, that's easy.
20:41
You just need an IBM 3594 multiplex coax to HDLC, which is a serial synchronous protocol. Optional, you can do that with an Ethernet module, which is very rare. If they are available, it's very expensive on eBay. Or you use an optional token ring module. Not so rare, because at some point token ring was pretty popular.
21:05
Well, not so much popular, but let's say Ethernet won, but there was a time that it was about even. So, you need a token ring hub and a Cisco 2650 to bridge token ring to Ethernet. Now, if you do all that, you get this set up.
21:27
So, it's weird, but you have your coax from the terminal coax to here. Then this is your token ring. Token ring goes to the Cisco, that's not on this picture. From there it goes to, oh sorry, the token ring goes to, because you need an active token ring hub.
21:43
So, token ring goes in here, because something needs to be active in the token ring network. From there it goes to the Cisco. From the Cisco, you route it to Ethernet. Ethernet, you go into a standard Dell, maybe running Sentinel 6 with a token ring adapter. Or, I come to you in a second.
22:01
Or, just a simple standard Ethernet. And then you have a real terminal session to your Hercules emulator. Yes, sir, do you have a question?
22:20
Over here. No, it's possible, and like I just said, it's supported until Sentinel 6, I believe. And then you don't need the Cisco router. And you don't need, well, but you still do need the active hub. And, because this thing still doesn't talk token ring.
22:41
Okay? Did I answer your question? Okay. Now, if you want to skip the hardware, I just want to experience this warm, sort of glowing, nostalgic screen. This warm amber of phosphor tints. What's the term in English?
23:02
The days of yore, right? You know what I mean? Okay. Then there is, sorry? The days of yore is the term, right? Yeah, if you like dinosaurs and stuff. Yeah, yeah, like the dinosaurs time, that's about it, yeah. So, there is this project on GitHub, called retro, cool retro term.
23:24
And then you can run this in a terminal emulator and it saves you a lot of headaches. Because you don't have the hardware. And it still looks original. Okay, my new friends, during the preparation of this talk, I actually made a few friends. Who knew? A lot of guys in the S390 Mail Group, really, they're very welcome to newcomers.
23:45
Maybe it's an age thing, I don't know. But, you know, they're helpful. They like to, everybody who's new in this, because they are, like, some of us here love Linux, or FreeBSD. I don't want to step on any toes here.
24:06
And they love their mainframe world. So, they're very open to questions. Moshe Barr of the MosheX YouTube channel, lovely guy, you can ask him anything. And I found Sam Golob, he even called me, he's in Texas.
24:23
He lives in Texas, I live in the Netherlands. And then the phone rings and it's Sam Golob. And who is Sam Golob? Well, the CBT, that's the mainframe tape distribution. It's like a Linux distribution, but it's a tape with tools for the mainframe. And he's been a maintainer for the last 25 years, and his predecessor did it for 17 years.
24:45
So you have one distribution of tools, that's at that time 43, so it's now 45 years old. So that's pretty impressive. In short, it's a wonderful new world for fun and profit.
25:01
Update in April 2019, Moshe has 130 video terminals. And there was a free XR initiative from a Dutch guy. Because MVS-XA does a maximum of 16 MB storage.
25:20
Storage means memory, RAM. MVS-XA was released with more bits on the address, so maximum 2 GB of storage. So they petitioned IBM to make, not for the source code, but to make the binary distribution license free for hobbyists to use.
25:44
And there was a very nice initiative. They had a little over a thousand people signing the petition. By now we know IBM has answered this request and denied.
26:02
Saying no, we've got this new emulator that's not Hercules. It only costs $8,000 for a PC, and we'd love you to buy that. So, unfortunately, no 2 GB of storage. Their reasoning behind it for the initiative was, you know, this is a 30-year-old operating system.
26:28
There's no chance that it's still in production and competitive to what's currently offered at IBM. But clearly there are still people living in a closed world. Oh, Scoop, my new hobby project, completely open.
26:42
This domain, there's no website, there's not even email, because I just registered this a couple of days ago. Is there anybody who knows what this is? Oh, this is very cool. Yeah, it's a display unit for the Apollo moon shuttle thing.
27:03
And it's only the DSKY, for display keyboard, keyboard display. And currently my 3D printer is printing all these parts. There is already somebody who sells a print that's similar to this.
27:26
It's not a huge amount, but he keeps the PCB design files closed. But for the rest it's open. And I'm now studying KiCad. So I should be able to reverse engineer a simple display with Arduino behind it.
27:45
I don't know how much time it will take, but you need to have a hobby, right? So, thanks for your attention.
28:03
What frightens me is there are people actually making photos of this picture now. Okay, thank you. Okay, questions. Yes, sir. Sorry?
28:22
There's nothing here. Like I just said, it's not live yet. I've only registered the domain. I didn't have time yet to put up at least a dummy page. Even email is not yet routed. Yes, sir. So retro computing systems sign up benevolent way because we know that the technology is old,
28:47
is no more in production, so we like to tinker with that. But this stuff is very, very active and in production. Even the emulator has dials. Why should I do this to myself?
29:03
I don't understand because it doesn't look like there are some practical technological reasons beside legacy. So the question is why would I do this to myself to look into Hercules? No, to learn a mainframe. To learn a mainframe. Besides the fact that there are still projects who are trapped.
29:25
Currently, currently at this point in time, every year there are 5 billion lines of source code in COBOL written. Added to the current code base. Added. New lines are corrected, but anyway, new lines nonetheless.
29:42
Why are they doing this to themselves? Why are they doing this to themselves? Actually, if you pay for a mainframe, it costs a lot of money. You have 30, 40 years of history in COBOL development on your mainframe. And then somebody comes up to you and says, oh look, we've got this new language via Java or Python or C.
30:02
And we can translate everything onto a PC, which is a lot cheaper. Mind you, it doesn't have the throughput, so you need to cluster it. It's not a single PC that can do it as quickly as a mainframe. And then you get the question of the biggest business case. What does it cost to maintain your current situation and keep developers and everybody working on it?
30:26
What is the yearly price for that compared to translating 40, 50 years of software development into new software? Sometimes you've lost the source code. So it's like, ah, I think it did this, and there is just no business case.
30:45
Often there's just no business case to justify porting everything to a new platform. Yeah, five billion lines. Okay, yes, sir.
31:06
Yeah, no, no. It's a data set, it's data files, data files are text only. So there are no databases on MVS at the moment. Well, there are some developments, there are still developments on MVS with free software tools and utilities.
31:29
So I believe there's also a TCP IP stack in the latest releases. You could use to connect, let's say, to Postgres, which is of course a fantastic database, and implement a client-side library, just pick PGLib and translate that to mainframe system calls and try that.
31:47
Unfortunately, my time is up. I thank you all for your attention and have a nice weekend.