VM/370 R6

These are very large files and it may not be practical to successfully ownload them using low speed network connections.

2000: Bob Abeles's VM/370 R6 distribution

Bob Abeles released a copy of the IBM VM/370 R6 distribution in its original form, circa 1979 - two "tapes" created with the VM/370 DASD Dump Restore (DDR) program, which need to be restored to 3330 disks. This is exactly how a new IBM customer would have installed VM on their new System/370.

• base-source.aws.bz2
• CPR6L0.ddr.aws.bz2
• ptf-616.aws.bz2
• starter-3330.aws.bz2
• vm370r6-essentials.tar.gz  Start here 
• VMREL6.ddr.aws.bz2
• waterloo.aws.bz2

• README.txt extracted from essentials tarball

The ".bz2" files are compressed in bzip2 format. The bzip2 and libbzip2 home page has information and source code for the bzip2 utility.

2004: Andy Norrie's VM/370 R6 "4-Pack" System

Andy Norrie built atop Bob Abeles's system. He put a lot of effort into re-working and cross checking the patches.

Download from Norrie's VM/370 Page http://www.boglob.co.uk/vmdist.html via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

Paul Gorlinsky's 2006 5-Pack System

In 2006, Paul Gorlinsky released the "5-Pack" VM/370 system. As Dave Wade wrote, "It has all of Andy's fixes, plus many enhancements that make it an almost useable system."

The "5-pack" system is not available from the CBT Tape, but you can dowload it from Dave Wade's http://www.smrcc.org.uk/members/g4ugm/vm-370/VMDIST.zip website, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

2009-2021: Bob O'Hara's "SixPack"

In 2009, Bob O'Hara, one of the early IBM VM/370 programmers, announced Release 1.0 of the "SixPack" system. As he wrote, it 'rolls up all of the modifications posted on the H390-VM and Hercules-os380 Yahoo groups since the "5-pack" system was released in 2006.' As with earlier systems, the name comes from the fact that it is organized as 6 3350 disks. Bob's annoucement credited "Robert O'Hara, Paul Edwards, and Dave Wade. It is based on earlier versions of VM/370 for Hercules developed by Andy Norrie and Paul Gorlinsky."

Bob and Dave coordinated 4 releases of the SixPack. They are not available from the CBT Tape, but you can download them from Dave Wade's website, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

• 2009: SixPack 1.0, which added Gnu C, EPLISTs, better HELP, among others.
• 2009: SixPack 1.1
• 2010: SixPack 1.2, which added Rexx, PL/360, and lots more.
• 2021: SixPack 1.3

2021 to now: VM/370 Community Edition

In 2021, several folks were preparing a new update to the SixPack system. A discussion ensued about how to name the new system, and they settled on "VM/370 Community Edition".

These distributions are not available from the CBT Tape, but you can download them from the http://vm370.org website. Like the the 4, 5, and 6-pack systems, these VM/370 CE distributions are packaged as a ZIP file (e.g., VM370CE.V1.R1.2.zip), and organized for easy deployment using the Hercules System/370 emulator.

• 2021: VM/370 CE 1.1.0.
• 2021: VM/370 CE 1.1.1, which added NUCXTEXT and SEGMENT to CMS, upgraded Pascal, and bREXX.
• 2022: VM/370 CE 1.1.2, which added a lot of HELP files, ASSIST, and XNET.

Most VM/370 R6 discussion occurs on the Hercules-390 VM mailing list at https://groups.io/g/h390-vm.