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Obtaining Mainframe Experience w/o a Mainframe? 132

Posted by Cliff from the chickens-and-eggs dept.
Nice2Cats asks: "So I'm reading all over about how companies are desperate for people who know how to work mainframes, especially now that IBM is shipping them with Linux. But how -- short of a course with Big Blue or some other exercise in expensive formal education -- can I acquire even the most basic information or experience with big iron? There doesn't seem to be many tutorials or introductions online; what would be nice, but I can't seem to find either, would be a simulator that would run on a PC. All I want to know is if I like enough to be seriously interested."
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Obtaining Mainframe Experience w/o a Mainframe? More

Obtaining Mainframe Experience w/o a Mainframe?

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  • Here is a slightly dated... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sevn ( 12012 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:18PM (#6621705) Homepage Journal
    yet excellent page on just this topic. :)

    HERE [lnl.net]

    Hope this helps!

  • The Hercules System/370, ESA/390, and z/ Emulator (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:19PM (#6621717) Homepage Journal
    Hercules [conmicro.cx] is an open source software implementation of the mainframe System/370 and ESA/390 architectures, in addition to the new 64-bit z/Architecture. Hercules runs under Linux, Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000.

    Hercules was created by Roger Bowler and is maintained by Jay Maynard. Jan Jaeger designed and implemented many of the advanced features of Hercules, including dynamic reconfiguration, integrated console, interpretive execution and z/Architecture support.

    • Re:The Hercules System/370, ESA/390, and z/ Emulat (Score:5, Informative)

      by peterjt ( 50113 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:38PM (#6621874)
      I'vebrought up Hercules at home and it does a good job at the HARDWARE level. the real issue is that of getting an O/S that you CAN run.

      Older versions of MVS (ie MVT) are available, as are older versions of VM. However, these run in 370 mode, not in ESA or Z mode.

      I'm not sure about what Linux versions would run on this emulator.

      It is though still a good means of gaining some familiarity with the environment.

    • Re:The Hercules System/370, ESA/390, and z/ Emulat (Score:5, Funny)

      by Ratbert42 ( 452340 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:51PM (#6622320)
      A number of our developers hypothetically could possibly be running Hercules and some of the latest and most sophisticated IBM software and it (hypothetically again) kicks ass.

      Disclaimer: I in no way know anything about any copyright or license violations and hardly speak for myself, much less my tiny tiny offshore company with absolutely no attachable assets.

    • Hercules is an open source software implementation of the mainframe System/370 and ESA/390 architectures

      So, let me see if I have this right. I can run Hercules on my Linux box (or Win98, even) and emulate an S/390. And then I can get the IBM software that lets you run multiple, independent Linux VMs on S/390. My Linux box has now multiplied! Heck, I could even make it into a recursive Beowulf cluster.

      That's step 1. Now to figure out step 2....

  • Mainframes are something you *learn* to like...:') (Score:5, Informative)

    by mellon ( 7048 ) * on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:20PM (#6621722) Homepage
    At least, that's the theory. After doing a fair amount of mainframe work, mostly with VM/CMS, I got to the point where the extreme weirdness of the environment was kind of cool in a retro sort of way, and I began to get a sense of how it all fit together. But this is not something you're going to pick up from a tutorial on the Internet.

    Basically, if you want to do mainframe stuff, you should find someone to hire you who needs some work done and doesn't mind paying you to learn, and then *don't assume you know what you're doing*. Even the way terminals and serial ports work is different. Many of the basic assumptions about how operating environments work are different on mainframes. CPU time is not free - if you accidentally run a spin loop, it can cost thousands of dollars very quickly.

    It's a very weird environment...

    It wouldn't surprise me if there were a 370 emulator out there, but where are you going to get the software to run on it? :'}
    • CPU time is not free - if you accidentally run a spin loop, it can cost thousands of dollars very quickly.

      What does this mean? Just because of the higher cost of the equipment? I can burn CPU-time-dollars that quickly with a Linux cluster also. Though it would be easier with a couple dozen E15Ks.

      Of course no one's counting CPU time for the purpose of calculating cost on Unix-like machines anymore. But that's just because there's no one to charge it to - CPU time is sold in whole system chunks. (Too bad

  • Buy a used mainframe (Score:5, Informative)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:22PM (#6621737)
    AS/400's come up on ebay all the time. Maybe a little small for your definition of a mainframe, but they will fit in your apartment.

    • Re:Buy a used mainframe (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Yonder Way ( 603108 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:09PM (#6622068)
      Actually I think that a mainframe may fit better, considering (from IBM paradigm) that the mainframes are more vertically oriented and the AS/400's more horizontal.

      Think of a mainframe as a refrigerator form factor (at least the late model ones) and the AS/400 as a very tall coffee table.

      The black thing in the foreground of this picture [trilug.org] is a late model IBM mainframe. It basically takes up as much room as any 19" equipment rack (or, like I said, a refrigerator).

      The downside to an AS/400 or a mainframe no matter which way you go is the exotic (for residential) power hookup requirements. Many local governments preclude residential zoned lots from having three phase power, which could really screw you if you want to bring home the big iron.
      • Three Phase ?? Really?
        I know what it is used for with moters but why on earth would you need it for a computer? The only thing I can think of is that you would want it to level out the power, but surly there are better ways.

        Seraphim

        • I know what it is used for with moters but why on earth would you need it for a computer?

          Two real reasons that I can think of, based on my experience with theatrical dimmers (which are totally exactly the same as mainframes! No... really!):

          - You need to draw lots and lots of power (say... 1800 amps), and 4/0 gauge cable is expensive (many dollars per feet) or not big enough, not to mention stupidly hard to install and maintain. With three phase, you get one several smaller cables instead of one big one,

      • Modern AS/400 systems are full tower case designs. Many of them have integrated UPSes in the base, which must make them heavy as hell but extremely unlikely to fall over.
      • go to Grizzly.com (or KBCtools.com) and order a 3-phase rotary convertor.

    • Re:Buy a used mainframe (Score:5, Insightful)

      by crmartin ( 98227 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:42PM (#6622935)
      An AS/400 would be kinda fun, but it is in no way a mainframe. In fact, as AS/400 is an emulator for a lovely machine of immensely weird architecture called the System/38 -- it had a "tagged" architecture, which means that it's essentially object-oriented hardware. It also has a 120-bit address space, in which all devices (memory, disk, tapes, floppies, networks etc) simply occupy parts of the address space. The emulator makes this rather baroque instruction set run on RISC-y underlying processors, and makes the processors transparent to the rest of the system: user software doesn't even know it's on PowerPC or something weird else. (There was even some discussion of doing VLIW processors, although I don't know what ever came of it.)

      The other amazing thing is that OS/400 as of V3R6 has the whole bottom layer implemented in C++ from bare silicon on up. So far as I know, it's the only commerical OS that was actually implemented from using C++ and object-oriented all the way. (I participated in teaching the folks at IBM the C++ they needed to do this.)

      The point is, though, that the IBM/360 series of mainframes are not the same.
      • I don't know how far you would extend "all the way", but I thought QNX was implemented on top of the Mach Microkernel, all the way C++.

        Just a thought, I am not completely sure of it.
        • Well, that's why I said "as far as I know" ... but thinking about it, I was pretty certain that the Mach kernel was straight C. At least to my aged and fuddled memory, it seems to me Mach predates C++ and is architected around ADTs rather than full objects.
          • C++ does not really predate Mach: both were research projects at the same time, early '80s. C++ at Bell Labs; Mach at MIT. Mach went commercial (in Steve Job's NEXT project) before C++ went commercial.

            (i have no idea if Mach used C++.)

            • (1) I said Mach predated C++, not vice versa, and I'll stand by that modulo age-related memory loss. But I'm pretty sure Mach was around when I started grad school in '83, while Bjarne sent me a tape of cfront 1.1 in something like '86.

              (2) Mach was a project at Carnegie-Mellon, not MIT.
        • No version of qnx is using Mach. qssl made their own kernal. For qnx6 that kernal is called Neutrino 2.

          And even photon(The gfx system) is using c bindings, so I really don't think they have used much c++.

          Martin
        • BeOS was written in C++

          QNX has its own Microkernel which come back a long way. In the old days the QNX microkernel fit inside the cache on a 486 AFAIK.

      • Re:Buy a used mainframe (Score:2, Informative)

        by Tower ( 37395 )
        Very true - the AS/400 is not a mainframe (though some marketing folks are trying out the name "midframe" here and there).

        >There was even some discussion of doing VLIW processors, although I don't know what ever came of it.

        The eServer iSeries (AS/400) now runs with the POWER4 processors - see http://www.ibm.com/iseries for products/details.

        (and yes, I work for IBM... on iSeries I/O products)
        • Cool! And how *are* things in Rochester?
        • There was a rumor / new report the machine layer for the 400 had been ported to the '86 architecture - mostly as an exercise.

          Anybody have any information on this? I can't imagine getting any kind of decent performance with this sort of thing. Maybe with the newer 64-bit processors, but it really sounds like a Stupid Computer Trick (TM) along the lines of porting the Java Virtual Machine to a Commadore 128 or Apple II.

          (OS400 is divided into several horizontal layers. There's a sharp divide at one layer --
          • Very nifty.

            Thank you. ;-)
          • More seriously, I'm nnot sure what you mean by "decent performance", but as I recall the SLIC layer was supported on other 32-bit CPUs back then (say, 92-93) so I don't find anything too astounding about it being on x86 chips. There's a natural SMP approach, so it might perform all right.

            The other rumor I heard years later was that IBM had a version of SLIC that made the Java instruction set "native" to AS/400 -- or at least as native as anything else. I don't recall ever hearing anything formal about i
        • There's no need for big iron anymore; The eServer iSeries (AS/400) now runs on the PlayStation One - see http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/32189.html .

          And yes, i am joking.
    • AS/400 != Mainframe

      If you want you can pick up an account on an AS/400 for $20 per month http://www.NETSHARE400.com/

      Look up timeshare for main frames, IBM was setting up Linux mainframe dev accounts through their tech dev thingy.

      http://www.internet-timeshare.com/

  • It's really very easy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by elmegil ( 12001 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:25PM (#6621762) Homepage Journal
    The same way as everyone else got mainframe experience in the old days: Entry Level Position.
  • Not just for Breakfast anymore...

  • IBM Redbooks (Score:5, Informative)

    by Grotus ( 137676 ) <rlmoser@earthli n k . net> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:35PM (#6621841) Homepage
    IBM has pretty decent documentation on their stuff, at least the AS/400 docs were good.

    Go here [ibm.com] for the zSeries and S390 docs.
  • If you could simulate a mainframe on a PC, do you really think mainframes would be so expensive?

    (It's a JOKE)

  • teh gibson. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    j00 mu57 h4x0r 73h g1b50n, 4n|) |)0wn104d "garbage"
  • Didn't we already have this discussion awhile back?

  • Training (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mr. Piddle ( 567882 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:56PM (#6622000)
    Do companies do training, anymore? Or, do they expect everyone to learn everything of relevance on their own time with their own resources or at the expense of a prior employer? Or, are there such a surplus of qualified canidates milling about that even thinking about making a horizontal career change is laughable?

    For example, while the author of the article above wanting to learn mainframes is cute, would any company give a damn if he already has several years experience but didn't already learn the ins and outs of mainframes hands-on in a former employer's "enterprise" environment?

    It just seems that ground-floor opportunities are a myth. Ugh.

    • Re:Training (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Bitsy Boffin ( 110334 )
      You are right.

      Companies are no longer interested in training people to do a job, you only have to look at job postings in your local newspaper to see that - 'must have x years experience in some obscure system' (one I saw recently was funny, "must have 5 years commercial experience with ASP.Net").

      I wanted to move from writing web applications to more traditional C/C++/Java stuff a year ago - I'm a BSc. in Computer Science, had been working several years in the web. While my CV was good enough to get me o

      • Re:Training (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ComputerSlicer23 ( 516509 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:07PM (#6622739)
        Hmmm, don't take this the wrong way... but C++ isn't something you pick up in a week or two, I've been coding in C/C++/ObjectiveC professionally for 6 or 7 years now. Sure you can use it to do everything you could so in say Pascal in a week no problem.

        A couple of weeks of C++ experience won't teach you the nuances of the STL, how templates work, the strange rules about operator overloading. It won't teach you in's and out's of the pretty large C/C++ standard libraries. You won't know anything about the sublties of the multi-inheritance issues. You won't know about the nooks and cranies involved in overloaded function call parameter resolutions. That's the kind of expertise you need to be able to do serious C++ work. It's something that takes at least a year or two of experience, and dedication to learning the ins and outs of it all. They are better off paying some fresh out of college grad less money to learn in all likelyhood then they are you. They have the same degree you have, that you claim will make you competent in a couple of weeks. Why should they pay you extra?

        You've got it all backwards, the semantics of the language are what are important. In fact, I'll go so far as to claim that your experience might make you a worse candidate for using C++ then your fresh out of college grad. You have knowledge and expectations about how you think things should work. You think you know what the semantics are. However, subtle differences in the semantics can lead to very poor code, where you end up fighting the language the tools to get the job done.

        Java, which I don't know, I am told is really difficult to be very good at, if you aren't extensively familiar with the ins and outs of the areas. Simple stuff with J2EE, like certain containers can't deal with threads. Stuff like how overloading works, the difference between the object type Integer, and the base type int. The differences between the various JVM's. The sublties of hooking up the various intrumentation tools. There is an extremely large standard library, and knowing how it works, and which pieces are how old, and what is compatibile with with versions of the JRE's is very important. Just knowing the syntax, and that inner classes are a feature, and that there are no pointers, and there are no functions not attached to a class, doesn't make you Java programmer. Sure you can have a cursory knowledge of Java in a couple of weeks. Great, I'm not terrible interested in paying you experince programmer wages so you can learn the tool. There are entry level jobs out there for Java. They'll be thrilled to have someone with programming experince.

        Just because you have a degree in Astro-areo dynamics, and have experience designing parts on for the Shuttle engine, doesn't mean you have the necessary skill to be a drop in replacement for a engine designer for Dodge trucks. A guy fresh from college who studied the Engineering methodologies of Dodge for the 6 months in a case study, is probably much more qualified then you are, for very similar reasons.

        My first programming gig, was pretty much, we higher you for twice what McDondald's pays you, and we'll throw you in the deep end of the pool 3 months, if you still floating at the end of that, your a keeper. I got plenty of lessons at the school of hard knocks, they had a couple of very good senior programmers who kept the rookies on track, and bailed them out if things got out of control. I made good money for what I knew, and 2 years later, I did in fact know a lot about C/C++. My next job, I spent a bunch of time writting ObjC. Spent 18 months learning the ins and outs of the OpenStep Runtime making not much more the the first job, and I learned a lot about Oracle and being a DBA. I learned a lot about Solaris, Linux, and WindowsNT during all that too. Then, I finally got a good job, for someone who had experience in C++, and needed some expertise in doing SA work, and I had to build a schema, and pick a backend RDBMS system to run the company's core data on. I finally was considered worthy of the task.

        Kirby

        • Re:Training (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Carpathius ( 215767 )
          At least in part I disagree. I've been doing professional programming and application development for over fifteen years now.

          There is a *big* jump from procedural programming to OO programming, and there are those who I've seen have major problems making that jump. But that's not true in all cases. Once you understand the basic techniques in procedural and OO development, it's not that big a jump to move from language to language. It's mostly a matter of learning the libraries.

          Can a C programmer learn
          • Oh, sure I'll agree with most of that. I think any good programmer has the ability to become highly productive programmer in nearly any language. I however, can see the extreme appeal of highering someone whose cheaper, and accepts they don't know it all.

            Just because you know Java's OO, doesn't mean you be able to use templates in C++, or read templated code in 2 weeks. You might spend 6 months doing C++ programming to come across all the various idioms. C++ is a very large language with lots of nooks

        • And your average young stud fresh out of university will be able to accomplish these goals better than a seasoned veteran?

          Bullshit.
          • No, but he'll be a hell of a lot cheaper... Also, I know several people at the local University, so yes, I literally can hand pick very, very good people straight out of college. People who are just short the school of hard knocks lessons.

            My argument, isn't really that a fresh college boy is a better hire, but that 3 weeks of time, does not make you anywhere near as valuable as a person who has the expertise I actually need. His claim of, well I've done a lot of web based programming, all I need is a c

            • You make a good point. I was under the assumption that the subject here had previous experience with some more traditional programming languages like C or C++, but simply never had a job requiring their proficiency in his job description.

              If indeed it is the case that he has had no such experience, then I would agree with you completely.
      • There is a company in Houston called Universal Computer Systems [universalcomputersys.com] that has built their IT model on training in C++. They write automotive service software, and love to hire people with a developer's mind, wether they have C++ experience or not.

        Of course, they start novices off around $30k, but if you're a JD, you probably shouldn't get much more than that.

        Admittedly, I've never worked there, but have worked with devs who got their start there.

        To tie it all together, and not be offtopic, there are still
    • ... [is] there such a surplus of qualified candidates milling about that ...
      It doesn't matter how you finish the question, the answer will be "yes".

      Ug indeed.
      It just seems that ground-floor opportunities are a myth.
      The only ground-floor opportunities today are the ones you get a few seconds after they throw you out.
    • When I graduated from college in 1990 I took about the first job offered to me, one at a large midwestern bank.
      I spent the first six weeks along with four other 'programmer trainees' learning the in-and-outs of the banks IBM mainframe platform as well as goodies such as COBOL, structured programming, etc.

      Even today, even though I'm no longer at a bank, mainframe programming is still about 30% of my job.
    • In my experience, no.
  • Depending on what you consider a mainframe, there's always SIMH [trailing-edge.com], a rather nice emulator for PDPs, PEs, and a number of others. There are some other free emulators out there, but I know nothing aout them. I've brought up a PDP-8 and PDP-11 under SimH before.
  • You can see how UNIX people think by looking at shell, sed, awk, and perl scripts. Why not look for MVS/JCL, RPG (aka Rotten Piles of Garbage), Cobol tutorials and examples. You may also come across the problems people were trying to find solutions for. FWIW, my impression is that mainfraim world is *much* more regimented than the most locked down UNIX box.

    I suggest poking around http://99-bottles-of-beer.ls-la.net/, even has s/390 and s/370 assembler.
  • Have you tried this [compaq.com]? You can test drive a bunch of different systems and OSs.
  • I happen to be typing on one of these babies [t3t.com] right now. My thinkpad is running Redhat 8 as the host OS, with the FLEX-ES emulator that lets me run zOS or z series Linux (Suse in my case). The emulator has dongles and is pretty touchy about the hardware as well, so odds are you will pick up a xSeries machine or a T30 Thinkpad if you want to do a mainframe on the cheap.

    (Cheap being a relative thing when you are talking about mainframe costs, btw...)

  • Not as desperite as you think (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:05PM (#6622394)

    My dad has been a mainframe guy for years, and out of work for almost 2 now. Nobody will look at him because he only has a 2 year tech school degree. So they may want mainframe people, but don't think they are desperite enough to be flexable on their requirements.

  • Don't Bother (Score:5, Insightful)

    by perljon ( 530156 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:23PM (#6622484) Homepage
    All technology has two humps. On the first hump, you make a lot of money because the technology is hot. For example, .net. Then because the technology pays alot of money, a lot of people get into it and the pay goes down because the employee supply goes up.

    The technology becomes main stream and doesn't pay very much. Then, after a while, people start getting out of that technology. They retire. They become Pointy Hair Bosses. They get out of it. So the supply of knowledgeable employees goe down, and the pay goes back up. But the technology is dieing. It's days are numbered.

    For the most part, mainframes are on the second technology hump. You only get paid alot because old foggies are the only ones who know anything about. Basically, it's a waste of time to pursue mainframe knwoledge, because it's pay heighth is fairly limited.

    Solaris on the other hand is on the top of first hump. You can make a career out of knowing it. Linx on Micros is an up and comer on the hump. Windows is on the first hump. Mainframes are dieing.. just like cobol. Don't waste your time.

    • Re:Don't Bother (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Hellraisr ( 305322 )
      Mainframes are dying are they?

      Also, COBOL has been around for 50 odd years or so.. it has outlived other languages, and companies love it because their stuff that's years and years old will still compile and run, so they don't have to pay someone to rebuild from scratch.

      My guess is you're an x86 programmer, aren't you? And you think that just because you never logged into a mainframe that nobody else is.

      The biggest companies in the world still use them heavily, and as long as those companies still w

      • The biggest companies in the world still use them heavily, and as long as those companies still want the machines (they still do as their programs already run on them, and do so quite well), IBM et al will NEVER discontinue them.

        You know, this poster may almost be right... when things get entrenched, they have amazing staying power (if that isn't almost a circular statement...). A really good example is punch cards. Yes. Punch cards. Look at airline tickets/boarding passes. They're the size/shape that

        • Mainframes are cheap compared to the alternatives. At my place of employment there is a mainframe that has been continuously up and running for somewhere around 13 years depending on how you count it.

          The hardware & software is an order of magnitude more mature than Windows or Unix. It is really quite amazing, especially when you consider the minimal amount of attention & innovation applied towards them.
          • At my place of employment there is a mainframe that has been continuously up and running for somewhere around 13 years depending on how you count it.

            Maybe I'm out of touch with the "new math," but how many different ways are there to count this?

            • Some IT shops negotiate some outrageous amount of time for "scheduled maintenance", say 2-4 hours per week with management. This time is excluded in their availability numbers.

              I was at one place that claimed 99.999% uptime for everything from database servers to nt 4 file servers, as long as you didn't count 4-6:30 AM Tues & Thursday and 9AM-3PM Sunday. They weren't very happy me when the monitoring systems indicated that they actually had 98.somthing% uptime.

              Other places even claim that a powered sys
              • It's industry standard to describe uptime with scheduled downtime and not include that downtime in your statistics.

                However, the more 9's you need and the smaller the maintenance window, the more it's going to cost (and the more you'll be paid).
      • Of course they are...right along with *BSD...*g*
    • Mainframes are not dying. You really think that Microsoft or Linux is ever going to be able to handle the mainframe hardware? I don't think so.

      Sure, Linux runs *on* a mainframe, but what you are really doing is running hundreds of seperate environments that share resources on a single mainframe. The knowledge needed to get those hundreds of instances running *well* is arcane but still useful.

      If you want to learn mainframes, learn it. I think mainframes are making a comeback, and there is going to be a sho
    • Still a lot of job ads out there for archaic systems and apps. While the second hump's days are numbered, having arcane skills just might mean the difference between job and no job, in todays environment.

      Even a little such knowledge helps if they're looking for someone to migrate data and/or applications off the dying mainframe. I am currently learning OS/390 and SAS in order to migrate a university department's data from that, and into M$ Access. Their databases aren't even large enough to bother with S

  • Join the Navy (Score:2, Informative)

    by jadis_194a ( 692628 )
    Perhaps counterproductive for your carrier, but I've ran into an impressive array of Mainframe and Minicomputers in the Navy, particularly in the Intelligence/Cryptology field. At the tender age of 19, I was assigned to administer a PDP11/70 based broadcast server. I was given a full bookshelf of manuals, and told "go figure this out..". This was 1994. I still have the faceplate from that beast from when we decommissioned it. Next in my parade of obsolete equipment was an AT&T 3B2/600 running SVR4. Not
  • This is probably not considered a mainframe, but does anyone know how to train with OS/400 and z/OS ?

    A lot of companies are looking for people with AS/400 knowledge. But none is willing to pay any initial training ("because it would be cheaper to get a support contract with IBM" I was told once).

    So they are looking for people who already know about AS/400.

    But AS/400 is not something we usually learn at CS school. I've looked at AS/400 learning sessions at IBM's and at various learning centers and prices
    • But AS/400 is not something we usually learn at CS school.

      I hope not. Managing an AS/400 would be an IT job, not a CS one.
    • Two or three years ago there was a consulting firm that rented time on their AS400 for not very much a month advertising on the AS400 newe group. Hop over to groups.yahoo.com or your favorite newsreader and do some looking there. Ask -- it's quite friendly as usenet goes.

      IBM publishes all their reference manuals for both the iSeries and zSeries OSs on line for free access. Go to www.ibm.com and search around for eSeries, OS400, OS390 and Reference. Also search around for :Redbooks and Redpapers -- that's w
    • IBM released a Personal AS/400 a few years back. I have one as a footrest. Search Ebay. Oh, and AS/400s are midrange computers, not mainframes.

      More importantly, head to ibm.com and read about the AS/400 architecture. Decide what OS you're going to concentrate on (OS/400 is a good choice), then decide what you want to do. Administration? There are tons of Windows-based tools for this. Programming? You'll want to look at RPG and/or COBOL, and CL is a must. You can program directly in the green screen environ
    • start here: the iSeries infoCenter! http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/iseries/v5r1/ic2924 / index.htm [slashdot.org]

      Also, check out search400.com for searchable info. A company Manta makes training material, but they're fairly expensive to spring for on your own.

      I went looking for links and found this http://www.ts400.com/ [slashdot.org] that looks like someone poor could afford it. AS400 is really easy to do simple things, and complicated things are only moderately hard. The standard AS400 interface is really goofy, but makes sense wh

  • If companies are really desperate for people with mainframe skills, then they will have to consider on-the-job training. However this doesn't necessarily help you. If you don't have mainframe skills, you will have to beat all of the other job applicants without mainframe skills. However, if you demonstrate commitment by attempting to self-educate on mainframe technology, this could make you stand out from the crowd in the eyes of a prospective employer.
  • When a company migrates away from IBM proprietary operating systems to Linux, this will tend to reduce their dependence on the diminishing pool of people with "mainframe skills". Skills in developing software and/or using Linux are applicable across a wide range of hardware platform. If anything, Linux on IBM would be a reason to invest personal effort in acquiring these skills.

    • Re:Linux on IBM negates "mainframe skills"? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by THEbwana ( 42694 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @03:04PM (#6627627)
      They dont migrate away from zos to linux. They migrate from win and various unices to linuximages running in lpars on zos machines.

      - This means that they need zos operators to setup the zos environment and linuxadmins to run the linux images running on the zos machine.
      The problem lies in the availability of zos veterans who didnt stop learning things 10-20 years ago (and who are not retiring within the next couple of months). These veterans are needed to setup the system lpars, wlm, etc etc to provide the logical areas where linux is supposed to run. If this is not done properly, there will be no benefit in running Linux on zos compared to running Linux on i86 clusters -> IBM will sell less zos hardware.

      The biggest problem for IBM (IMHO) is that it's so hard to get mainframe experience -> no one learns the platform -> they sell less hardware.
      I recently saw a WebSphere zos assignment in London paying 2500 GBP / day. That's roughly 90 000 usd / month, clearly reflecting the supply and demand situation in this market segment. If IBM wants to continue selling their zos hardware they will have to give the slashdot crowd an easy and cheap route to gaining mainframe skills. /m

  • Easy! (Score:2)

    by di0s ( 582680 )
    Simply go 88 MPH [imdb.com] and have enough plutonium to get back!
  • "So I'm reading all over about how companies are desperate for people who know how to work with chicks, especially now that they are so common down in the Mall. But how -- short of a course with a mate's girlfriend or some other exercise in expensive sex for hire -- can I acquire even the most basic information or experience with big tits? There doesn't seem to be many tutorials or introductions online; what would be nice, but I can't seem to find either, would be a simulator that would run on a PC. All I w
    • "So I'm reading all over about how companies are desperate for people who know how to work with chicks, especially now that they are so common down in the Mall. But how -- short of a course with a mate's girlfriend or some other exercise in expensive sex for hire -- can I acquire even the most basic information or experience with big tits? There doesn't seem to be many tutorials or introductions online; what would be nice, but I can't seem to find either, would be a simulator that would run on a PC. All I w

  • Tutorials and mainframe emulators (Score:4, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @12:11AM (#6623084) Homepage
    There's an online VM tutorial from IBM. [ibm.com]

    There's a free mainframe emulator [conmicro.cx], but the available operating systems for it are either Linux-based or obsolete IBM operating systems. IBM still charges very high prices for their current mainframe operating systems.

    It's a pure interpreter written in C, and thus slow; emulation costs you about two orders of magnitude in performance. But that gives you the performance of an entry-level IBM mainframe circa 1998 or so.

    There's a commercial emulator called FLEX-ES, but if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it. It's being sold to companies who are replacing old IBM mainframes with an emulator running on an x86 rackmount server. IBM will license their OSs for FLEX-ES, as long as the emulated CPU doesn't exceed 8 MIPS (!).

  • Now that Y2K is over you probably won't find many companies looking, learn something else.

  • VAX emulation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by polymath69 ( 94161 ) <dr.slashdot@NoSPam.mailnull.com> on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @01:37AM (#6623473) Homepage
    The VAX may technically be a minicomputer, but when I entered the machine room for the first time, it was awfully big and impressive. I went on to work with them in college, and after.

    One day at work the hardware croaked. I was working as a sort of liazon to IT, and my department depended more on that VAX than any other department, or IT itself, so I was investigating replacements such as MicroVAXen.

    What I found was an emulator called charon-vax [charon-vax.com]. Test versions were available for Windows and Linux; a commercial version only for Windows. It is with some sense of accomplishment that I can report that I convinced the company to sell the Linux version commercially, on the strength of my company's order, which we delivered.

    To use the emulator (evaluation or commercial) with VMS, you need a copy of the OS, which at the time was available for $20 to members of DECUS under a hobbyist license. DECUS membership was free, but they've since renamed themvelves, and I've lost touch.

  • Check Community Colleges (Score:5, Informative)

    by RobertEdwards ( 15770 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @04:35AM (#6623942)
    In my city, and I expect in others, the local two year community college teaches extension courses in what we used to call "Data Processing". Basic Tape Monkey and Console operator courses in mainframes and AS400s. JCL, CL, maybe a bit of Cobol, RPG, or some SQL queries. Nothing fancy, but the courses are hands on. These classes would not necessarily be for college credit - perhaps for adult education CEUs. Fees don't seem particularly expensive.

    This is obviously dependent on your local CC's resources, interests, and local demand. But check it out.


  • About 2 months ago I remember seeing an s/390 basic mainframe with I think 4 CPUs in one tall rack selling as is for $5000 usd on eBay. I almost started a mortgage on the thing but they hadnt booted it and gave no guanrantees, even didnt know the parts were complete. The interface was an IBM laptop that came with it. Plus it wasnt shipping to Canada and I didnt think American friends had that kind of space in their dorms.

    Still keeping an eye on the eBay for such items.

  • How about IBM's redbooks? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bravo_Two_Zero ( 516479 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @09:29AM (#6624974)
    http://publib-b.boulder.ibm.com/redbooks.nsf/porta ls/S390

    I'll hand this much to IBM. They put out *tons* of documentation for free. It's not a ground-up overview followed by specific, real-world instruction. But, having attended more than a few AS/400 classes (no, it's not a mainframe... it's a midrange), I can tell you the instructor says "Here's your CD of Rebooks. Read them from cover to cover. This class is only to give you an overview of what you will find in them."

    So, you don't go interview someplace and say "it's ok... I read the manual." But it's a starting place. And, you'd certainly sound more credible in an interview if you said "I have years of OS experince in open systems. My zSeries knowledge comes from reading Redbook X, Y and Z, and I want to learn more." Chances are, the mainframe guys have the books on their bookshelf. And, knowing the mainframe people, they refer to them.

  • Someone contact me with mainframe OSes, please. (Score:3, Funny)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @02:03PM (#6627192)
    I don't give a flaming rat's patootie about the DMCA, or the "don't copy that floppy" rubbish. I REALLY want to get into the mainframe admin field, and to do so, you need experience with newer mainframe OSes.

    If you can give me a copy of such things, email me at J L B at T W U dot net.

    I'm serious. I want to learn this stuff; DAMN copyright law. We all know it's impossible to find an entry-level position on anything nowadays, much less on mainframe operations.
  • There are many in the mainframe field that would "show you the ropes" pretty cheaply, but seriously it's going to take a few weeks for you to map your internal concepts from PC/Windows/Linux/Mac/Unix or wherever onto the mainframe concepts. I am technical support ( often called systems programmers) on an IBM z800 running z/OS. We once had a developer port some code from Unix or a PC (he wouldn't say which) to the mainframe. The performance sucked, because he was doing I/O one byte at a time. z/OS DASD is l
  • I'd heard that IBM had a developers agreement whereby you might license the z/OS current software for a fee. I'm not sure how much it was, but it was in the thousands of dollars. It may have even been open only to IBM employees, but I'm not sure of the details. This was *not* the same deal large installations got, because you had to submit your development plans to IBM and it probably wasn't good for high performance, either. Mostly it was for users of the P390 or R390.

    That said, I think I can tell yo

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