Decades ago, early 1980's, NYU here in New York offered an "MVS Internals and Debugging" two-semester course as part of their School of Continuing Education. At the time it was taught by the VP of systems programming at the Irving Trust bank, whose name I have forgotten, but he was a darn good teacher. Of course, this was pre-OCO, so the teacher had access to all the source code of the system. The course was very detailed, covering all the major architectural control blocks and system flow, though it did not cover IPL or NIP details. IIRC, the hardware of the time had just introduced significant micro-coded "fast path" help for significant parts of the dispatcher based on MC calls that counted times through various pieces of the dispatcher code that showed where the "hot spots" were, and this teacher covered those "hot spots" and the micro-coded "help" logic in great detail (many of the "helpers" were to do with multi-CPU locking like spin locks, if my memory hasn't completely gone south).
Unfortunately I have long since lost my copious notes from that course, but if there are any others out there who also took that course and kept their notes, those would be a great contribution to the community. Peter -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Storr, Lon A CTR USARMY HRC (US) Sent: Friday, June 20, 2014 12:37 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: z/OS technical overviews for new(ish) system programmers (UNCLASSIFIED) Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Caveats: NONE Hello List, We have a couple of team members wanting to learn more about MVS internals. They already understand quite a bit of usage (e.g. SMP/E, PARMLIB, TSO and JCL) but are interested in soldifying their understanding of operating system fundamentals. I'm attempting to assemble an "information roadmap" and find very little that introduces the operating system with a fairly narrow scope at a reasonably introductory level. There are books that describe bits and pieces of it, ad-nauseum, but I find little that paints all of these pieces together into a bigger picture. Some sources that I have found include "Introduction to the new Mainframe: z/OS Basics" and some volumes in the "ABCs of System Programming" series. They do a fair job of providing a technical overview of the various storage managements and IOS. I'd especially like to see something that describes components in terms of new hardware capabilities and how MVS has evolved: 1) The original dispatcher (especially RBs and interrupt management), task management (especially the difference between DUs), program management (especially the PSW and what APF means), storage management and I/O management 2) Serialization techniques over the years (WAIT/POST, ENQ/DEQ, Locks, Latches) 3) Additions to the dispatcher (SRM and WLM) 4) Storage evolution (24bit-to-31bit in XA, ARs and data spaces in ESA, 31bit-to-64bit in z/OS) 5) Centralized (shared) programming support (e.g. SVCs, subsystems, PCs) 6) Availability improvements (e.g. GRS, sysplex [XCF] and parallel sysplex [XES]) I'd appreciate pointers to any materials you deem relevant. Thanks, Alan -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
