Re: What can I do with an unloaded partitioned data set on Linux?
On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 03:50:09PM +0000, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> I am the proud owner of several unloaded partitioned data sets, dating
> back to my days on OS/360 and OS/370.
>
> Does anyone have any code I could use to decode these? I don't mean the
> EBCDIC-to-ASCII (or to UTF-8) conversion -- I mean the weird file format.
>
> Or documentation about this file format?
>
> Or will I have to reverse-engineer it myself? Not that that's likely to
> be an insurmountable task. I just suspect that somewhere, someone has
> already done it.
I remember that there are some old-timers on here who have mentioned in
passing their history with mainframes, so hopefully you get an answer.
I didn't start __administrating__ computers until OS/2 then Linux,
although I am sure I _used_ a mainframe (probably doing that by sending
this mail...).
I must admit that until I read "days on OS/360...", I didn't know what
you were talking about.
On what medium are the data sets? Do you have a box that can physically
read them? IIRC, there is a OS/360 emulator in the repository (I forget
the name); I wonder if it can read it.
For documentation, have you tried either wikipedia or the IBM website?
Its advanced search page is quite powerful.
I wish I had access to a mainframe (and the team to run it). I think
I'd learn a lot of good, conservative, skills. Perhaps having people
like you on DU is part of what makes Debian good and reasonably
conservative.
Good luck.
Doug.
Reply to: