Category : Assembly Language Source Code
Archive   : R42.ZIP
Filename : READ.ME

READ.ME PC/370 Release 4.2 Installation Guide

Copyright 1988 Donald S. Higgins

Don Higgins
6365 - 32 Avenue North
St. Petersburg, Florida 33710
January 5, 1988

PC/370 users:

Welcome to release 4.2 of the PC/370 cross assembler and emulator
package! You are encouraged to copy and share this package with other
users on the condition that the package is not distributed in modified
form, and that no fee is charged. If you find the PC/370 product
useful, send 45 dollars to the address above to register as a user and
to support continued shareware maintenance and enhancements.
Registered users will receive notices of future releases. The product
is distributed on an as is basis with no implied warranties. However,
requests for fixes and enhancements from registered users are given
priority for inclusion in future releases. Currently planned future
enhancements are as follows:

1. Assembler H support with integrated macros.

2. Expanded memory support using protected mode on 80286/80386
running under native OS/2.

3. Improved 370 emulation performance using additional math co-
processor assists for packed decimal and native 80386 32 bit
instructions. (Note the current speed of the PC/370 emulator on
a 16 MHZ 80386 is in the range of 25,000 IBM 370 instructions
per second or 0.025 MIP's.)

The major features included since PC/370 release 3.2 are as follows:

1. Micro Focus COBOL/2 Extended Memory (XM) protected mode calls to
PC/370 assembler subroutines are supported on 80286 and 80386
systems. XM supports up to 16MB of real memory usable by COBOL
and PC/370 assembler subroutines. See USER.DOC for more
information. This facility requires use of new resident option
of emulator, and option B of linker to create BIN type module.

2. The following PC/370 supervisor calls have been added:

a. Svc 36 reloads program into specified area of memory.
b. Svc 37 defines user exits for supervisor calls.

3. The SPIE svc 14 has been enhanced to create program
interruption element control block and to pass sufficient
information to support transparent program check recovery.

4. At entry to main programs, register 1 now points to standard
MVS parameter list address, which in turn points to half
word parm length followed by EBCDIC parameters passed from
MS-DOS command line.

5. An optional hardware assist for the CVB and CVD instructions
is included which requires the 80x87 math co-processor and
can speed up the instructions by up to a factor of 4 for
large numbers. The floating point option P controls whether
the assist is activated when 80x87 is installed.

6. The L370 linkage editor now supports option U to allow
unresolved references.

7. The emulator debug facility now has option to restore all
trace points at any point during execution by repeated use
of K command. An optional version of emulator is also included
with the name E370P42.EXE which does not include interactive
debug or ASSIST facilities. This version saves space, but
should only be used with fully tested production programs.
To use this version, make it resident by executing it.

8. The PC/370 emulator E370R42.EXE can now be made resident by
simply executing it directly. This eliminates the time required
to load the emulator for each execution of a PC/370 assembler
program. In addition, a common system queue area (SQA) memory
can be allocated in the resident emulator address space to be
shared by assembler subroutines called from COBOL. The size of
the SQA is specified in hex paragraphs as the only parm. The
default is 10 hex or 256 byte SQA. Assembler subroutines called
from COBOL can now perform file I/O and dynamic memory
management using the common SQA memory.

9. The 370 cross assembler A370.EXE now supports the COPY statement
to include commonly used DSECT's, EQU's, or code. Common copy
files such as IHADCB.CPY for a DSECT of a DCB, EQUREGS.CPY for
R0-R15, and EQUSVCS.CPY for equates for all of the PC/370
supervisor calls are included.

10. The following fixes have been included:

a. CVB error when input field contained negative 0.
b. SRP error when second field contained more than 6 bit #.
c. Program check on executed instruction did not store
correct address of next instruction following execute.
d. EBCDIC to ASCII translate table did not correctly handle > {
and [ characters.
e. Text file with LRECL=1 caused incorrect record move.
f. Operand of ORG statement can now be CSECT or DSECT as
well as relative symbol within CSECT or DSECT.
g. File open svc 1 now takes error exit for file not found and
reg 0 and 1 now contain error code at entry to error exit
(See LIB\SYNERROR.ALC for subroutine to decode errors).

For brief description of changes in previous releases since 1981,
see DOC\HISTORY.DOC. Thanks to Jacques Roy, a macro preprocessor
M370.COM (written in 370 assembler) has been included since PC/370
release 3.2 along with a set of MVS compatible macros including DCB,
OPEN, CLOSE, GET, PUT, READ, WRITE, WTO, WTOR, LINK, LOAD, GETMAIN,
etc. If you use the macro preprocessor, register as a macro user and
support future enhancements, by sending a registration fee of $20. to:

Jacques Roy
XL Software Inc.
1000 St-Jean Baptiste #120
Quebec, Canada G2E-5G5

To install the PC/370 system on a hard disk and run the demo programs,
copy the file BAT\INSTALL.BAT to separate hard disk directory and
execute it. INSTALL requires two parameters, the first is the drive
containing the distributed floppy disk and the second is the hard disk
drive. Command C>INSTALL B C will install the system on hard disk C
reading files from drive B with prompts for each volume if more than
one. The install file defines a root directory \R42 which contains
all of the executable programs and system files required by the PC/370
facilities. The following sub-directories are also created:

1. \BAT - contains batch files which can be executed without
any parameters after setting current directory to
R42.

2. \LIB - contains ALC source code for PC/370 system
subroutines.

3. \CPY - contains CPY source code for ALC source COPY
includes.

4. \MAC - contains MAC and MLC source code for macro pre-
processor.

5. \CBL - contains CBL Micro Focus VS COBOL demo program source
code along with demo PC/370 assembler subroutine
source code.

6. \DOC - contains machine readable PC/370 documentation. Read
DOC\INTRO.DOC for PC/370 overview and more
information on the other component of the package.

7. \DEMO - contains demo program ALC source code.

8. \UTIL - contains utility program ALC source code.


Hope you enjoy PC/370! Feedback on your usage and/or
evaluation of the product is highly encouraged.

Sincerely,



Don Higgins, CCP, CDP

___________

IBM - trademark of International Business Machines
COBOL/2, XM - trademarks of Micro Focus Inc.
MS-DOS - trademark of Microsoft