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.

Another download location for Bob Abeles's VM/370 R6 is http://source.rfc822.org/pub/mirror/hercules/vm via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

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.

Community on Groups.io

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

RAR

RAR Labs Home page

http://www.rarlabs.com

Free uncompressors for most platforms pick Extras on the RAR page or go here

http://www.rarlabs.com/rar_add.htm

An unrar package is available in most Linux distributions including Debian.