Overview DUMAPD – Display UCB Mapped for MVS38J / ISPF v 2.x / Hercules(current version 0.9.00 2025-09-06) The idea of displaying UCB (Unit Control Block) percolated from programmatically scanning of the UCB in my MVS 3.8J software development hobby projects! As mentioned, the thought occurred while setting the address of the UCB Lookup Table and pointing to the first UCB…
Category: ISPF 2.x
Group DASD in MVS 3.8J
Overview Group DASD in MVS 3.8J / ISPF v 2.x / Hercules(updated 2025-09-30) When submitting a batch MVS utility, in most cases, dataset allocations point to a specific volume serial as shown in the below sample JCL stream (highlighted in white): //IEBCOPY JOB LB,’COPY PDS 2 PDS’,CLASS=A,MSGCLASS=A, // MSGLEVEL=(1,1),NOTIFY=LARRY01 //* —————————————————————- //* COPY PDS TO ANOTHER //* —————————————————————- //STEP010 EXEC…
DUNITD in MVS38J
DUNITD – Display UNIT NAMES Utility for MVS38J / ISPF v 2.x / Hercules(current version 0.9.00 2025-06-01) Overview Displaying of UNIT NAMES and associated devices (CUUs) can be accomplished by using the TSO CP, UNITS, installed in MVS 3.8J TK3, TK4- and TK5 distributions. Originally, UNITS installed on TK3 as a load member into SYS2.CMDLIB from tape (tsoutils.het) via JOB…
DEDTD in MVS38J
DEDTD – Display EDT Utility for MVS38J / ISPF v 2.x / Hercules(current version 0.9.00 2025-06-01) Overview Displaying of the EDT (Eligible Device Table) can be accomplished by using the TSO CP, UNITMAP, installed in MVS 3.8J TK3, TK4- and TK5 distributions as part of the DYNAMASK package. UNITMAP sources data from EDT and UCB to display results. The EDT…
Personal DSMON in MVS38J
Overview DSMON – Personal Dataset Monitor(current version 0.9.01 2025-08-08) One day, while reviewing output from the ISPF VTOC Utility add-on, option V (=3.7.V in TK5), with my userid HLQ as the DSN search argument, a numerous set of datasets were listed! Some resulting from manual testing. Others from applications… At this juncture, I realized an alert-type process (aka personal dataset…
MVS38J Software Contributions
Software contributions to the MVS 3.8J enthusiasts and hobbyists community are listed below in chronological order with most current announcement at top. Also, current development workload in progress is listed for awareness purposes to be published and announced at a later date. This post serves as an archive of announcements. Dates are in the format MM/DD/CCYY or monthname-day-ccyy. Thanks,Larry Belmontes…
GGUESS in KICKS
Overview KICKS is a transaction processing system for CMS and TSO enabling execution of CICS programs directly under TSO and provides a high level of source code compatibility with CICS. Compilers supported (not an exhaustive list) include MVT COBOL and MVS GCC. KICKS is owned and authored by Mike Noel. Complete information on this product available at http://www.kicksfortso.com/ This post…
Pretty-TERMSIZE in MVS38J
Overview ISPF v.2.2 (ISPF-like product from Wally Mclaughlin) provides two specific Z-variables to expose terminal size, ZSCREEND and ZSCREENW, screen depth and screen width, respectively. Each variable is 4-bytes, zero-filled. For example, to display terminal size on a panel (e.g. primary menu, ISP@PRIM), one row (line) could be defined in the )BODY section as shown below: 1 2 3 4…
PRTSCR in MVS 3.8J
Overview PRTSCR – ISPFv2.2 Print Screen Utility(current version 0.9.01 2025-02-08) ISPF v2.2 (ISPF-like product from Wally Mclaughlin) does not include a print screen function (i.e. PRINT, PRINT-HI) as provided by the IBM ISPF product. ISPF maintains several system Z-variables for developer use. Some Z-type variables for screen information include ZSCREENW (screen width, e.g. 80), ZSCREEND (screen depth, e.g. 24) and…
GGUESS in MVS38J
GGUESS – Number Guessing Game across technology stacks from PC BASIC to MVS 3.8J TSO / ISPF / KICKS /Hercules to HTML JavaScript(current version 0.9.00 2024-05-01) One of my first programs to write (during the late 1970’s) was a number guessing game using interactive BASIC interpreters on the Altair 8800 and TRS-80 Model I microcomputers (Intel 8080 CPU). The program…