Introduction to
S/370 Principles of Operation


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If you have ever looked at POPs (GA22-7000 S/370 Principles of Operation) before, you might think it should have the following warning prominently displayed on the cover

Here Be Dragons


POPs is some of the most difficult technical reading you will ever encounter in an IBM publication. As we said earlier, POPs is a kind of contract between the hardware designers and software developers. Like all good contracts, it is precise. Fortunately, unlike contracts, POPs (mostly) defines it's terms. Therein lies one of the main difficulties: term definitions are scattered throughout POPs, in no readily apparent order. Fortunately for us, POPs is graced with an excellent Index section, and a very thorough Contents section.

Let's begin our journey through POPs by looking at how it is laid out. Unfortunately, the authors of POPs hide this layout in the Contents section by listing every section in the manual. This is really a pity, as POPs is well laid-out once you see the forest for the trees.


  • Cover Page
  • Revision Page
  • Preface
  • Contents
  • Chapters
  • 1 - Introduction
    2 - Organization
    3 - Storage
    4 - Control
    5 - Program Execution
    6 - Interruptions
    7 - General Instructions
    8 - Decimal Instructions
    9 - Floating-Point Instructions
    10 - Control Instructions
    11 - Machine-Check Handling
    12 - Operator Facilities
    13 - Input/Output Operations
  • Appendices
  • A - Number Representation and Instruction-Use Examples
    B - List of Instructions
    C - Condition-Code Settings
    D - Facilities
    E - Table of Powers of 2
    F - Hexadecimal Tables
    G - EBCDIC Chart
    H - Changes Affecting Compatibility between System/360 and System/370
    I - Changes Affecting Compatibility within System/370
  • Index

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

  • Introduction
  • Storage
  • Control
  • Program Execution
  • Interrupts
  • Instructions
  • Miscellaneous (Machine-Check Handling, Operator Facilities)
  • I/O
  • Appendices and Index
  • As we begin delving into POPs, we'll start at the front and work our way to the back, commenting on each major section.

    Cover Page

    As usual, the cover page gives the Publication Number GA22-7000, as well as the publication's title "IBM System/370 Principles of Operation".

    Revision Page

    This page gives the Edition number and the date of that edition. Usually when you received a new copy of the manual, you would want to read this page (the first paragraph in particular) so that you could determine whether old copies of the same manual were obsolete or not. Almost everyone that regularly uses IBM manuals has read the rest of the page at least once; most never look at it again. I find it interesting because IBM clearly describes how they do business. Finally, the Copyright date(s) appear at the end of the page.

    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.

    Preface

    This is one of the most important sections in the manual, and usually is likewise for other IBM manuals. It usually tells you, when you first pick up a manual, what you can hope to find in the manual. Here is the first paragraph from the hardcopy manual I have on my desk, GA22-7000-10:
    This publication provides, for reference purposes, a detailed definition of the machine functions performed by System/370.
    Note the "for reference purposes" and the word "detailed". POPs is not a tutorial, it's a reference manual.

    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

    Size Notation (KB and MB)
    Bytes, Characters, and Codes
    Other Publications

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

    Reading

    Contents

    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.

    Chapter 1 - Introduction

    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.

    Chapter 2 - Organization

    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:

    Main storage
    CPU
    PSW
    General Registers
    Floating-Point Registers
    Control Registers
    Vector Facility
    I/O
    Channel Sets
    Channels
    I/O Devices and Control Units
    Operator Facilities

    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.

    Chapter 3 - Storage

    With Chapter Three, POPs dives right into its normal mode as a reference manual. This would be an excellent place to take a break.

    If you have time before we're ready to begin again, feel free to review the opening page (page 3-1) and skim the chapter.

    If you get as far as the ASN stuff, skip it. It's advanced material and the Turnkey system doesn't support it (from which you might deduce that software is required to make some of these features work).

    The Dynamic Address Translation, Address Summary, and Assigned Storage Locations sections are interesting. Dynamic Address Translation (DAT) is what makes virtual addresses happen. The Address Summary describes the various kinds of addresses in the terms POPs refers to them. Finally, Assigned Storage Locations specifies the portion of main storage the CPU reserves for architecturally defined data areas in "low storage".

    Break Time

    Interacting with the S370ASM group

    You might well have some questions at this point. Here's where the wonder of the Internet comes in. Feel free to post your questions in the S370ASM group.


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