In terms of the concepts discussed, POPs basically divides into even fewer sections.

As we begin delving into POPs, we'll start at the front and work our way to the back, commenting on each major section.

This main value of this page is to tell you how current the manual is, and frequently to what operating system, program product, or facility the publication applies.

This publication provides, for reference purposes, a detailed definition of the machine functions performed by System/370.

POPs is extremely detailed, probably to the level of detail which you've never before seen. Finally, note this paragraph also contains the word "definition". This is the very heart of POPs (and programming in general): definition. Definition is what declares that a byte will contain 8 bits, and that the SLR instruction sets the condition code. Without precise definition of terms, there is no value to a reference manual. In this regard, POPs is supremely valuable. It defines its terms in excruciating detail. Once you know the "trick" to reading POPs you will come to appreciate and depend upon this detail.

Had we skipped the Preface, we would have missed out on another valuable resource: a summary of each Chapter and Appendix. Finally, the Preface is rounded out with

I strongly encourage you to read the entire Preface. Now is a good time. We'll wait.

Having read the Preface, we now see that it is not necessary to summarize the manual's contents; it was covered in the Preface. Had we skipped the Preface, we'd already be confused and we're not even up to numbered pages.

Here we observe the Contents is laid out in an Indented Outline format. This is the same format your teachers taught you to use in your English (or other language) Composition class. Each new level of indentation shows a refinement on the higher levels of indentation. Although POPs makes an attempt to vary the font size of each section, sometimes it is not quite distinct enough to be clear. If you look ahead to the opening page of an individual Chapter, you will note that this same Indented Outline format is preserved there. Sometimes it can be helpful to flip back to the Contents section or the Chapter's opening page to reveal the indention level to grasp the context in which a section is being presented.

Parsing POPs

As long as we're talking about tips on reading POPs, allow me to pass along a valuable technique that many of us learned but long ago forgot. When faced with a difficult sentence, it is sometimes useful to parse the sentence using the noun - verb - noun - prepositional-phrase methodology. In this methodology, you find the sentence's main noun (the subject of the sentence). Next locate the main verb. For complicated sentences, there may be several prepositional phrases. If you know the difference, identify the direct and indirect objects (nouns). Full credit for this reminder goes to one of my High School English teachers, Mr. DeMartini.

Let me warn you, there are some quite complicated sentences in POPs so keep this technique in mind. POPs was written by some very intelligent people, and they were not at all afraid to use the language to its full capabilities.

Another technique you might find valuable is to consider each sentence as a string of terms or symbols. Once you've parsed the sentence using the noun-verb-noun technique, see how the symbols are related or manipulated in the sentence. This technique doesn't always pay off, but if you're stuck it might prove useful.

The first two paragraphs are introductory, the remainder of the first section consists mainly of features that make the S/370 more advanced than the S/360. Don't get bogged down on these features. Read them until you start to get lost and then start skimming until you get to another feature; repeat.

It is this early in our introduction to POPs that most of you will experience confusion (if it hasn't already happened). Because POPs is a reference manual, sometimes terms are introduced without being defined. Those of you that actually read the Preface will recall the authors said as much.

General Approach

Alternatively, if you want to skip the rest of the tutorial and strike off on your own, proceed using the General Approach:

Identify a term you don't understand.

Find the term or something like it in the Index.

Read the section(s) referred to in the Index listed under that term. This reading will almost certainly cause you to identify new terms you don't understand.

Repeat until comprehension occurs or you run out of new terms (or time).

As a variation on the General Approach theme, if you can identify a specific chapter or section that deals with the term in question, read as much of that chapter or section as you can understand.

Don't be discouraged. POPs is complicated. When you read POPs, you're on a kind of Easter Egg hunt, but instead of eggs you seek understanding.

If you're a beginner, you are not yet well suited to the General Approach so stick with us unless you're extremely confident in your abilities to pick up technical material on your own. However, once you've mastered the fundamentals the General Approach or a variation thereof could serve you well.

It is here that we need to take a "gut check". Do you have what it takes to learn S/370 Assembler? Did you read the Preface like I recommended? If you didn't, I'm not optimistic about your chances for success. I can't instill the desire to succeed into you. You either want to learn this or you don't. You're certainly welcome to read through the tutorial without reading any of the recommended materials, but you frankly won't learn that much if you skip the reading.

The tutorial will not be long enough to cover every instruction you'll need to program in assembler. Instead I plan to teach you "how to fish" rather than "feed you".

But let's be realistic. Maybe you don't have time to read everything I point out. That's OK, the tutorial is online (subject of course to Link Rot); you can come back later. But don't fool yourself. Reading the tutorial alone isn't going to teach you S/370 assembler. The IBM manuals are a key resource. The hercules-s370asm group is another key resource. Use them wisely, and you'll probably be pleasantly surprised at how quickly you pick up the subject matter. Romp through your key resources (or ignore them altogether) and you'll get as much out of the experience as any other romp: time passes, perhaps pleasantly, but not much else happens.

Finally, keep in mind that newsgroups wax and wane. The level of enthusiasm in the S370ASM group is high right now. No one knows what the future holds, so if you're serious about learning S/370 assembler making the most of these key resources now rather than later might be prudent. Almost all of the experienced people answering questions in the group have full plates, and other demands on their time so they might well wander off. Try to keep them interested. You have what may well be an unprecedented opportunity here, act accordingly.

Enough motivational spewage, back to the subject at hand.

Now we're starting to get to the good stuff. Normal humans might think of Chapter Two as an introduction, rather than what we saw in Chapter One. The pseudo-explanation for why this occured has to do with the history of IBM mainframes. When the S/370 was introduced, many customer sites were already running a S/360 system. Chapter One was for them. It regaled them with all the new features they could expect to exploit if they would only send IBM another big pile of cash. Believe me, back in those days Chapter One was compelling reading.

Would you like to hear what might be another reason why the introduction is in Chapter Two rather than Chapter One? I think the authors of POPs, knowing the pivotal role the publication would have on future participants in the field would have, used a bit of subterfuge to filter out the less capable candidates. Call it Social Darwinism if you like. These were smart people, and smart people like working with other smart people. Do the math. Of course I could be completely wrong on this.

And here, dear reader, you are. You've passed the gut check, you're dealing with the reading as best you can, and you're about to enter the Promised Land.

Chapter Two. Read it. That's it. It's as close to English as POPs ever gets.

In Chapter Two, you learn about the main S/370 system components all in six short, sweet pages. Here they are:

No dragons so far. Just some hardware components, some of them quite similar to those we introduced in our Imaginary S/370 Design History. CPU, same. PSW, similar. General Regisers, we called them General Purpose Registers [GPRs] (and so will POPs, quite soon). Floating-Point Registers [FPRs], new. Control Registers [CRs], also new. Vector Facility, forget about it; I'll probably not mention it again. I/O, oh yes, we'll want some of that. And how will we go about that? Channel sets (optional), channels (required), and I/O devices and Control Units (mixed bag). Operator Facilities, that would be Hercules (with or without the Fish GUI).

I know you're anxious to hear about Floating-Point and Control Registers, so I'll draw a distinction between GPRs, FPRs, and CRs.

GPRs are used for integer numbers

FPRs are used for fractional numbers (think Scientific Notation);
     numbers with a decimal point and some trailing digits

CRs are used to control the S/370 system itself

Initially, you can think of the CRs as bit flags and/or numbers that specify options for the S/370 system. As an application programmer coding in S/370 assembler, you will have ready access to GPRs and FPRs but not CRs. Systems programmers, if they write code, might want to manipulate CRs (but maybe not). The IBM developers that wrote MVS itself were sometimes required to manipulate the CRs.

Now is a good a time as any to introduce the reason normal applications don't have access to CRs. The S/370 hardware design makes a big deal about system integrity. Not only does the hardware protect one application from another (assuming the operating system fully exploits the hardware features), the hardware protects the system from all the applications as well.

The primary method used to provide this protection is a single bit in the PSW, indicating something like "restrictions in effect" when the bit is on, and "you own the machine" when the bit is off. I can't help myself, it's bit 15 in the PSW (which you can promptly forget). It is only when bit 15 is off (called "being in supervisor state") that a program can succeed in manipulating the CRs. In terms of symmetry, when bit 15 is on (called "being in problem state") and a program attempts to manipulate the CRs it will "fail". This "failure" is called an interrupt, about which we'll hear more later.