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Date:      Tue, 30 Mar 2004 05:27:59 +0000 (UTC)
From:      "Bjoern A. Zeeb" <bzeeb-lists@lists.zabbadoz.net>
To:        Adam Turoff <ziggy@panix.com>
Cc:        freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Mainframe support
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.53.0403300513070.714@e0-0.zab2.int.zabbadoz.net>
In-Reply-To: <20040329203016.GA4496@panix.com>
References:  <200403290441.i2T4fscK023387@cimbali.dssrg.curtin.edu.au> <20040329203016.GA4496@panix.com>

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On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, Adam Turoff wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 10:28:00AM -0800, Johnson David wrote:
> > IBM ported Linux itself to their mainframes. It wasn't a community
> > project in any sense of the word.
>
> Actually, I think the initial work was done by a few hackers in Germany.
> I don't remember if IBM took this work and fleshed it out, or if they
> had a similar project already, and were waiting for customer demand to
> polish it up and release it.

IMHO the work was done by an IBM internal project here in Germany by
the IBM Entwicklungs GmbH (with some external? people like Fritz
Elfert who had worked on p.ex. isdn4linux).
If I remember right a project page with some pictures had been on
linux.s390.org  but I am on cons25 at the moment.


> > We could do this, but I don't think
> > anyone here can afford an IBM mainframe. Heck, most of us couldn't
> > afford the real estate to house one :-)
>
> That's not strictly true anymore.
>
> I came across a reference to an open source project that provides
> VM hardware emulation.  So you could run Linux under VM, or MVS, or any
> other VM hosted operating system on a stock x86 box.  It was supposed to
> be a pretty faithful emulation, and was able to scale to a few
> concurrent OS instances on a reasonably powered vanilla box.
>
> Sorry, I don't have a reference for you.  I don't remember where I saw
> it, but it was within the last 2 weeks or so.

/usr/ports/emulatores/hercules/ this is ?


> > It would be nice if FreeBSD could run in the Z-Series, if only for the

Have a look at NetBSD. I do not know the current state of the port (or
if they still work on this) but if I remember right there are a
hand of people working on it ?

Apart from that any port should be far more easy these days now that
gcc and binutils are available but you will still need someone with
enought MF experience to help and you need to get the specs for the very
proprietary hardware - you do not want to get the GPLed code into a
BSD kernel for an entire arch ...

-- 
Greetings

Bjoern A. Zeeb				bzeeb at Zabbadoz dot NeT
56 69 73 69 74				http://www.zabbadoz.net/



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