Legacy Systems Installation

The Hercules Emulator faithfully replicates the operation of a wide series of IBM mainframes from the System 360 up to the z/10. Once you have obtained and installed the emulator on the PC or server of your choice you then need to select a mainframe operating system and install it on the emulator in the same manner you would on the real hardware. Hercules is capable of supporting any 31-bit or 64-bit IBM mainframe operating systems from OS/360 through to the current z/OS. Unfortunately, IBM has restricted the use of its current operating systems to IBM mainframe hardware only.  That being said, if you have obtained permission from IBM to install z/OS on Hercules, you will likely find that it runs just fine.

We have selected for demonstration purposes, MVS 3.8J as provided as part of Volker Bandke's MVS Tur(n)key System.  (See http://www.bsp-gmbh.com/turnkey/).  We acknowledge and thank Volker for his excellent work.

Start with the Hercules Base installation.  The posts below provide the complete instructions for installing MVS on the most recent, stable release of Hercules.