Fascinating project :-)

Roops

On Tue, 5 Aug 2025, 20:53 Paul Edwards, <
[email protected]> wrote:

> If MSDOS/PCDOS had been ported to the mainframe
> (or any other CPU - even the 80386), something would
> have had to be changed, as you can't do an 8086 INT 21H
> to request DOS services.
>
> With that in mind, z/PDOS-generic is my rendition, which
> I have previously announced.
>
> This time, it can run under MVS:
>
>                      COPY INDD=((I1,R)),OUTDD=I2
> IEB167I  FOLLOWING MEMBER(S)  LOADED  FROM INPUT DATA SET REFERENCED BY
> I1       -
> IEB154I  BIOS     HAS BEEN SUCCESSFULLY  LOADED
> IEB144I  THERE ARE 0000287 UNUSED TRACKS IN OUTPUT DATA SET REFERENCED BY
> I2
> IEB149I  THERE ARE 0000019  UNUSED DIRECTORY BLOCKS IN OUTPUT DIRECTORY
> IEB147I  END OF JOB -00 WAS HIGHEST SEVERITY CODE
> ^Lcopying from file dd:in, mode binary
> to file dd:out, mode binary
> 9564 bytes copied
>
> ^Lcopying from file dd:in, mode text
> to file dd:out, mode text
> 123 bytes copied
>
> ^L
> bios starting
> enter command, exit to exit
> about to execute program with entry point 02019408
> welcome to PDOS-generic
> running as dd:pdos
> before printing parm
> argv1 is -c
> about to open disk
> done open
> lba is 1f8
> fat type is
> opening dd:config
> shell name is :dd:pcomm
> about to call app at address 024DF8B0
> welcome to pcomm
> type help for help
>
> enter a command
> d
> a
> t
> e
>
> Tue Aug  5 19:06:58 2025
>
> enter a command
> d
> i
> r
>
> PDOS
> TEST    TXT
> COMMAND EXE
> CONFIG  SYS
> ád
> DEVEL
> BIOS    EXE
> PDOS    EXE
> TEST2   TXT
> XXX     TXT
> TEST    C
> TEST    S
> át
> TEMP    ZIP
> DOS
>
>
> To some extent it is "proof of concept", but we have a
> competent engineer (Dat Nguyen) from Vietnam who
> is expected to refine this in due course.
>
> There was one issue, which Dat has been working on
> for months (a large part of which was training).
>
> https://sourceforge.net/p/pdos/gitcode/ci/master/tree/pdpclib/stdio.c#l1743
>
>         /* this done_first variable is a workaround for what is presumed
>            to be a bug in mvssupa.asm
>            The first time a write is done, the read buffer should be
>            overwritten from the beginning.
>            But all subsequent writes require the first 4 bytes to be
>            skipped. We need someone to look at the mvssupa.asm.
>            Gerhard Postpischil wrote the relevant mvssupa.asm code,
>            but he died years ago
>         */
>
>
> Is anyone interested in looking at the S/370 assembler here:
>
> https://sourceforge.net/p/pdos/gitcode/ci/master/tree/pdpclib/mvssupa.asm
>
>
> You can obtain z/OS PCDOS from https://pdos.org
> (second occurrence of PCDOS)
>
>
> There is expected to be a z/OS Windows in due course, that
> allows you to write minimal programs using msvcrt.dll. I have
> already demonstrated that on the 68000.
>
>
> Another development since the zpg announcement is that
> z/PDOS-generic can now (effectively) drive a PC serial port
> so it can run a BBS (pdpbbs.exe) or dial one (devil.exe).
> Since it runs under an emulator, it is down to what the
> emulator can provide. In my case, that is mfemul.exe, and
> that runs under Windows, which means the mainframe can
> run the BBS under real Windows.
>
> I also produce a Windows mini-clone, which uses UEFI, and
> I have asked Dat to work on enabling serial port there too,
> which would in turn allow Virtualbox on a Mac M1 to run a
> mainframe BBS. Since the mainframe is being emulated
> either way, you can run it on a Mac.
>
> Note that with a second OSA/ICC tunneling through a
> Windows/Linux box with a real RS232 port, you should
> be able to attach a real traditional modem to a mainframe,
> depending on the definition of "attach".
>
> Also note that I have only demonstrated z/OS PCDOS running
> in batch, but it should run under TSO too.
>
> If you had a 3270 emulator that was able to switch to an
> EBCDIC version of ANSI X3.64, you should be able to run
> microemacs under TSO this way. There should probably
> be some standard way of the software signaling to the
> terminal emulator that it is switching between 3270 and
> EBCDIC ANSI.
>
> One other plan afoot (the groundwork has already been
> prepared) is to create an EBCDIC version of x86
> Windows. This should allow certain mainframe data (that
> behaves using the PDPCLIB rules) to be offloaded to
> a PC and then certain C90 applications could do things
> like quickly searching a large file, not under emulation,
> and offloading work from the mainframe.
>
> Another thing is that you can produce ASCII Windows
> executables from the mainframe, as gccwin now works
> there. You can produce EBCDIC Windows executables
> too, but I haven't yet published an OS to run them.
>
> That's all I can think of at the moment.
>
> BFN. Paul.
>
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