I wouldn't even bother with S/370. Start at S/360. You don't care about paging or vitual storage, yet. Once you have the S/360 down, most architectural extensions generalize easily from there. PoOps is way too much for a beginner, both in volume and prerequisite knowledge.
In the '60s, Tim Tomaselli of Stevens gave me an IBM publication. Little did he know how valuable it would turn out to be. Thank you, Tim!! It was excellent. You can find it here: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/training/C20-1646-1_A_Programmers_Introduction_To_IBM_System360_Assembler_Language_May66.pdf On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Tony Harminc <t...@harminc.com> wrote: > On 16 March 2012 11:49, Farley, Peter x23353 > <peter.far...@broadridge.com> wrote: > > > The other prerequisite to learning assembler is understanding the basic > architecture of the machine. For this knowledge you will eventually need > to read at least parts of the z/Architecture Principles of Operations > manual (available on the IBM website). This is a very large and imposing > manual that can seem overwhelming at first (and still is even when you are > an "expert"). Chapters 1 through 6 would enable you to gain a serious > understanding of the z/Architecture machines, but they do contain very > dense material to absorb all at once. Alternatively, you can use chapter 7 > in conjunction with reviewing the COBOL listing output I mentioned above to > see what each instruction does. This may provide a simpler introduction > for you. > > Another less overwhelming approach to the Principles of Operation is > to look at a much older one, such as the S/370 version GA22-7000 (but > not the -00 version!) available on bitsavers.org and many other sites. > There is nothing in the discussion of general instructions in such an > old book that is obsolete; they will all work nicely on the latest > hardware. > > Tony H. > -- OREXXMan
