TSS/360: A quick tour using Hercules

If you have Hercules version 4 (either Aethra or SDL) already installed on your system, you can skip this step.

Otherwise, type ./build-hercules.sh. If you are on MacOS add one of these two command line arguments depending on the package system you use

     --homebrew
     --macports

This will download hercules-helper, the Hercules source code and associated tools then build the system and install it under hercules/ in this repo. It takes 2-3 minutes on my system.

Type ./build-tss.sh. This will download the disk images and copy them to the dasd/ directory.

Type ./run.sh. It will check that Hercules is available and then start the main Hercules console. The red line saying Hercules is not running in an elevated mode is expected.

Open two other windows and connect via telnet to port 1052 on your local machine, eg by typing telnet 0 1052. The first window will be the operator console and the second the user console. In the screenshot below you can see this with Hercules on the left, the operator console on the top right and the user console in the bottom right.

TSS/360 before IPL. Source: Rupert Lane. License: CC0.

These telnet sessions must be connected before doing the next step.

Now type ipl 250 in the Hercules console to IPL (initial program load, ie boot the system). Press Enter in the operator console and you will get a ? prompt.

Type ls (meaning long start) to start the loading process. Answer the questions as shown below (<Enter> means just type the Enter key at this point)

ENTER PHY ADDRESS OF CARD RDR OR DEFAULT = EOB.
<Enter>
ENTER ADDR OF PAGING DISK
251
PRINT MAPS? 0 1 2 3...NONE IVM RESSUP BOTH
3
ENTER CODE FOR FUNCTIONS NOT TO BE LOADED.ALL FUNCTIONS WANTED = EOB
99
QUICK START REQUESTED?  IF Y ENTER ADDR  OF PACK FOR QUICK START DATA SET--N = EOB
<Enter>
DELTA DATA SETS?  Y OR N
n

It will then ask you if the clock is correct

CURRENT CLOCK VALUE IS 12/10/26 05.16.13 IS CLOCK CORRECT?

I normally just accept this by typing y, but you can change it by typing n and then following the prompt.

Finally the initial start up has completed and you will get a $ prompt. Type run to start the system fully, entering n to the bulk I/O question for now, and typing reply 1,ok to the next question.

$ run
 BULKIO REQUIRED?
n
   N ACCEPTED
05:16:20        SYSOPER0 NO DRUM PATH AVAILABLE
05:16:20        TSS00001 BATCH MONITOR HAS BEEN INITIALIZED
05:16:20 R=0001 SYSOPER0 VALIDATE THE SYSTEM HARDWARE CONFIGURATION. REPLY OK WHEN DONE.
reply 1,ok

It will then print

TSS370
 STARTUP COMPLETE,USERS MAY LOGON

In the user console (the second telnet window), press Enter and type logon tss,ibm to log on as user tss with password ibm.

The screen will now look something like the screenshot below. Note in the Hercules window I'm showing the system panel, you can switch between the Hercules console and panel by typing Esc. If you don't like the colours, edit hercules.cnf in this repo and change the line PANOPT MSGCOLOR=DARK.

TSS/360 after IPL. Source: Rupert Lane. License: CC0.

The prompt is an underscore: on a a physical teletype, this would have been followed by a backspace so the first character you typed would be underlined, which is a nice way of distinguishing user and system text on the printout. The terminal emulator allows you to correct mistakes with Delete and Control-U before pressing Enter.

Commands are 1-8 letters long: for example usage will print a summary of your resource usage so far.

Commands can take parameters, which are separated by commas and can be specified positionally or via keywords. For example, exhibit uid will show what users are logged on to the system.

exhibit uid
ACTIVE USER STATUS AT 09:36:38     12/17/26
USERID    TID TYPE SYSI
SYSOPER0    1 CONV  209 SYSOPER0    2 BACK    0 TSS*****   13 CONV  21F

To just show conversational users, you can set the type option.

exhibit uid,type=conv
ACTIVE USER STATUS AT 09:36:58     12/17/26
USERID    TID TYPE SYSI
SYSOPER0    1 CONV  209 TSS*****   13 CONV  21F

This could also be entered as exhibit uid,conv or even exhibit type=conv,option1=uid

Sometimes commands will prompt you for more information. If you want to stop the current program, enter ! as the first character of the line and press Enter. For example below I enter the print command without a file name and so it prompts for one; as I don't have anything to print I type ! to exit out.

print
 ENTER DSNAME
!

There is no online help, but explain can be used sometimes to provide more information about the last error message. Below I enter an unknown command foo and then get more information.

foo
 CANCELLED: SYMBOL FOO      TO BE LOADED NOT FOUND
explain
 NO MODULE WAS FOUND IN ANY OF THE DEFINED JOBLIBS CONTAINING THE SYMBOL.
  THE SYMBOL WAS EITHER NOT FOUND OR WAS CONTAINED IN A MODULE WHICH IN THE
  PROCESS OF BEING LOADED,HAD ALL CONTROL SECTIONS REJECTED

Let's enter and compile a simple hello world program in Fortran. Type edit source.hworld and it will print the initial line number 100 for this new file. Now enter the following program, using spaces not tabs. You can use Delete to correct any mistakes on each line.

        DO 1 J=1,5
1       WRITE(6, 2)
2       FORMAT(' HELLO, WORLD!')
        STOP
        END

To exit the editor, you need to use the END command, but you need to type an underscore first to signal this is a command rather than just text

To compile, type ftn hworld and to execute run hworld. Your session should look something like this:

edit source.hworld
0000100         DO 1 J=1,5
0000200 1       WRITE(6, 2)
0000300 2       FORMAT(' HELLO, WORLD!')
0000400         STOP
0000500         END
0000600 _end
ftn hworld
run hworld
HELLO, WORLD!
HELLO, WORLD!
HELLO, WORLD!
HELLO, WORLD!
HELLO, WORLD!
 TERMINATED: STOP

Let's take a look at our files now. Type pc? to print the catalog to the screen, ie do a directory listing. You will see a bunch of existing files and our source file is there

TSS*****.SOURCE.HWORLD,   ACCESS: RW

(The asterisks after the user id TSS are to pad it to 8 characters).

By typing line? source.hworld you can list the contents of this file to the terminal.

You'd expect also to see an object file as a result of the compilation, but there's no obvious candidate. In fact, the object code has been added to this library file

TSS*****.USERLIB,   ACCESS: RW

TSS/360 collects object code into libraries like this and when you type RUN to execute it, does the run time dynamic linking needed.

There's also a listing file produced by the compile which you can view by typing line? list.hworld. But looking at the catalog we see this strangely named file:

TSS*****.LIST.HWORLD.G0000V00,   ACCESS: RW

This is a generational data group, a way of keeping several older versions around. Compile the source again by typing ftn hworld and then pressing Enter when it says DEFAULT TO REPLACE PREVIOUS MODULE. Do a pc? again and you will now see two files

TSS*****.LIST.HWORLD.G0000V00,   ACCESS: RW
TSS*****.LIST.HWORLD.G0001V00,   ACCESS: RW

These files can be accessed by the full names given above, but you can also use list.hworld(0) and list.hworld(1) to see the latest and previous version.

As you can see, TSS/360 handles files quite differently from what we've seen on other operating systems - it even gives them a different name, calling them data sets. In a future post I will go into more detail.

Type logoff in the user console. This will trigger a bug in the system where the logoff accounting procedure does not run correctly. There is a way to work around this, however. Disconnect your user console telnet window (close the window or type Control-] and then quit). Switch to the operator console and type run twice to clear the error. You can now reconnect the user console and logon again if desired.

To shutdown the system, switch to the operator console and type shutdown. It will print a message saying this is completed. Now go to the Hercules console and type quit.

Bitsavers has a comprehensive set of manuals for TSS/360. Most of these are references, but a tutorial style guide that extends on the above can be found in Introducing TSS/360: A Primer for FORTRAN Users

I welcome any questions or comments, and also especially any corrections if I have got something wrong. Please email me at rupert@timereshared.com and I will add it here and update the main text.