Teaching myself Z/OS assembler
I’ve interned at a company that does a lot of mainframe work. Most of my mainframe experience has been using Java and Unix System Services. I’ve had some experience with the ISPF interface and C but none with assembler.
I’m graduating shortly and will be taking an independent study my last semester. I’d like to stick with the mainframe and was wondering what resources could teach me mainframe assembler.
Note that I don’t have experience writing assembler for any platform, but I do understand binary, hex, and have a theoretical understanding of registers.
Answer
None of the following are tutorial-like, just reference material. All will eventually come in handy though, so good to know; of interest would be:
- HLASM Programmer's Guide
- HLASM Language Reference
- HLASM General Information
- MVS Program Management: User's Guide and Reference
- MVS Assembler Services Guide
- MVS Authorized Assembler Services Guide
- z/Architecture Principles of Operation
You can find the books for the z/OS version you're on at IBM doc library:
z/Architecture Principles of Operation ("the POP manual") is the system bible. Of immediate interest in that book would be chapter 7 which lists the instructions and instruction formats.
For tutorial material though I can recommend (these are all on my bookshelf) any of the following:
- Mainframe Assembler Programming by Bill Qualls (this one comes with an emulator, PC/370, for compiling and running assembler)
- MVS Assembler Language by Kevin McQuillen and Anne Prince
And after you've mastered the basics:
- Advanced Assembler Language and MVS Interfaces For IBM Systems and Application Programmers by Carmine A. Cannatello
If you have questions you can, use stackoverflow of course, but for a more mainframe-centric pool of brains to pick, try http://ibmmainframeforum.com/. It isn't highly active, but the moderators know the dark arts.
Have fun!