Anyone using z390 Portable Mainframe Assembler for testing?

Don Higgins · Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 2:28 pm

All

Anyone using z390 Portable Mainframe Assembler for testing? I have just joined the forum and this is my first post. I am the developer of PC/370 and more recently the z390 J2SE based HLASM compatible mainframe assembler, linker, and emulator for Windows and Linux.

This week I've added several of the new HLASM features announced for V6 including DC type SY for long displacement constants and unsigned values for F and H type binary constants. I'm interested to see if there are active users here and also what other new features in HLASM V6 mainframe assembler users may be interested in.

dick scherrer · Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 8:20 pm

Hello Don and welcome to the forums,

What kind of material is available (web site, download, etc)?

Is there a "freeware" version of the assembler/linker/emulator for Windows/Linux?

As you have probably already noticed, we have some assembler topics, but not a high volume.

Don Higgins · Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 9:59 pm

Dick

Thanks. z390 is 100% open source java and the lastest version can be downloaded from Use [URL] BBCode for External Links. It comes with GUI and command line interface, documentation, demo programs, and optional regressiont test programs. Once z390 is installed, you can assemble, link, and execute the HLASM compatible "Hello World" demo that uses WTO by following these steps:

1. Download z390 v1.4.02 in InstallShield format for Windows or file image for Linux and install (There is a Linux guide on Use [URL] BBCode for External Links).
2. Double click the z390 icon on desktop to start z390 GUI interface.
3. Enter command ASMLG demo\DEMO which will assemble, link, and execute the demo source program DEMO.MLC stored in the demo directory. The ASMLG.BAT command executes 3 steps: macro assembly, link, and emulation. The following files are created in the process:
a. DEMO.PRN - assembly source listing
b. DEMO.OBJ - relocatible object file in mainframe compatible format with ESD, TXT, RLD, and END 80 byte records. (There is an optional expanded format showing all fields using OBJHEX option).
c. DEMO.LST - linker listing showing CSECT's, entries, etc.
d. DEMO.390 - relocatible load module with binary mainframe object code and traling RLD records.
e. DEMO.LOG - execution log including start, WTO, and stop statistics.
f. DEMO.ERR - error log including start and stop messages for all steps.

The TRACE option can be used for tracing execution using command ASMLG demo\DEMO TRACE. This results in generation of a DEMO.TRE trace file showing every mainframe instruction executed along with address, condition code, and operand values.

Hope this helps answer some initial questions.

wanderer · Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 10:59 pm

Hello Don,

I installed the file

z390 v1402 setup.zip - InstallShield for z390 on Windows Vista or XP

But when I click the icon in desktop, it says

"Could not find main class. Program will exit" in JVM Launcher dialogue box.

I have J2RE 1.4.2 installed in XP SP2.

Do I need latest version of java or is it something else I missed?

Thanks!

Don Higgins · Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 11:08 pm

Wanderer

Yes, you need to install J2RE 6.0+. z390 uses a number of features which were not added until 5.0 such as improvements to the BigDecimal class used in support of HFP, BFP, and the newer DFP floating point instructions. More recently z390 has been updated to minimum requirement for 6.0+ in preparatin for use of JDBC SQL support plus to pick up the performance improvements. z390 executes over 2 mainframe instructions per second on a 3 GHZ Dell Duo-Core chip.

wanderer · Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 8:49 am

Don,

Yes, it is working with the latest Java. I just ran two programs including demo. Will have to try more during the weekend.

Thanks for building such a nice product!