Re: non-ASCII environment

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>]

On Fri, 9 Apr 2010 13:50:43 -0400 (EDT), John Hasler wrote:
> Jerome BENOIT writes:
>> Nevertheless, something bothers me: where non-ASCII environment can be
>> found ?  Furthermore, can such an environment be created on a Debian
>> box ?  The aim is to check the portability of my code.
> 
> Look at the Hercules System/370, ESA/390 and z/Architecture Emulator.  I
> believe that it can use EBCDIC.

Yes, Hercules is an IBM mainframe emulator.  But the problem is licensing.
There are some *very old* releases of IBM operating systems that have passed
into the public domain that you can run on the Hercules emulator.  These
are circa 1975 or so, which is about 35 years ago.  An example is VM/SP
Release 6.  The problem is that those operating systems don't have a C
compiler or a POSIX interface.  Mainframe operating systems new enough to
have those features probably *can*, from a theoretical point of view,
run on Hercules, if properly configured.  But these newer versions are by
no means free.  They must be licensed from IBM, and you have to pay for it.
And IBM will not ordinarily license their mainframe software to run under
Hercules, except possibly in an emergency in a disaster recovery situation
or by special bid.  And if they do license it to you by special bid, you
will probably have to pay a hefty price for it.  What IBM wants, of course,
is for you to buy one of their entry-level mainframes and run it there.
They're trying to protect their hardware sales from encroachments by
Hercules.

Running the s390 architecture of Linux under Hercules is no problem.
In fact, I think that's how Debian builds and tests their s390 stuff.
But the overhead of the emulator is substantial.  And Linux is an ASCII
architecture; so that doesn't buy you anything.

-- 
  .''`.     Stephen Powell    <zlinuxman@wowway.com>
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