IBM System 360/370 Compiler and Historical Documentation

Simsalabim. Free or not? Yes, it is.

Helle to you, as well. Your e-mail was finally passed on to me. I worked at the Norwegian Computing Center (NR), way back. I worked in Simula a.s. afterwards, as long as we managed to keep the company going. was responsible for the IBM SIMULA system, among others, in both cases. I am actually very pleased that you have managed to get the old IBM SIMULA system up and running on an MVS emulator. Impressive! Yes, of course you may continue to use it! I was the last person in Simula a.s. I maintained a website and an e-mail address a number of years after the company terminated its operation, to keep the PC SIMULA system available for those who wanted to use it. It is still available for those who know where to find it (http://prosjekt.ring.hibu.no/simula/). I am not working with SIMULA at present, but keep those interested up to date as to what is still available.

Best regards,
Gunnar Syrrist

My question is whether I can give it out into the public.
With all relevant references, credits, etc, whatever necessary
.
There is a so called TURNKEY MVS system and people try
to collect "free" compilers for this beast.

Yes, by all means, make it available.

Best regards
Gunnar

Software and Prerequisites

Here you can find the Simula system and prerequisites.

The Hercules System/370, ESA/390, and z/Architecture Emulator

The first thing you need is a machine. Since one can assume that at home or even in your office many don't just have place for iron wrapped in blue, here you can find the tool you need, the Hercules System/370, ESA/390, and z/Architecture Emulator. The former site had not been maintained since almost 3 years and shows an outdated version. There is also an overview of current versions. Choose yourself.

The MVS Tur(n)key System, Version 3

ou may probably be able to use all kinds of MVS derived systems, the Simula system below was used under MVS/XA. To use it under z/OS, see below under bugs and remedies. I used the MVS Tur(n)key System, Version 3 nicely packaged together by Volker Bandke. The MVS Tur(n)key system is a package of freely available parts of the MVS 3.8J Operating System. There are some nice extensions to MVS which make life a little bit more easy that the native environment.

The SIMULA System 360/370 Compiler and Runtime system

Here you can have the Simula compiler and its runtime system. To my knowledge, this Simula implentation was done with PL/360. The compiler had a year 2000 problem. After patching one octet in the load module the beast became tame. There are some funny protection techniques in the code which made it difficult to use TSO TEST.

The file contains compiler and runtime system in XMIT/RECEIVE format. You can use the hercules dasdload program to install it at whatever location you want.

SIMULA 360 Users Guide

Unfortunately the quality of the scanned text is rather bad, some of the original pages having almost no contrast. I am working on that. I haven't integrated revised pages. The image is a scanned part of a real original binder.

• Title, Preface, Content and Part 1: BASIC SIMULA
• First half of Part 2: THE SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS OF SIMULA
• Second half of Part 2: THE SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS OF SIMULA
• Part 3: PROGRAM STRUCTURE AND SYSTEM FEATURES
• Appendices
• Revised pages

Simula Programmer's Guide IBM System 360/370

The writers of the texts seems to like drinking, there is a built-inn feature. Don't use the report procedure. Rather write to me.

There is also the External Procedure Library documentation that make available various external functions via the EXTERNAL ASSEMBLY interface. They form an integral part of the run-time system and allow to access to various features of the run-time system and of the operating system in general, e.g., you can execute any arbitary pieces of code without the need to program you own assembly functions.

• Title, Contents, Appendices, Introduction
• 1. System requirements
• 2. System elements
• 3. Hardware and implementation defined restrictions and capacity limitations
• 4. Implementation defined parts of the SIMULA language
• 5. Object program input/output
• 6. Debugging aids
• 7. Dynamic profile of program execution
• A. Hardware representation
• B. Compiler diagnostics
• C. Run-time diagostics
• D. Sizes of run-time library elements
• E. How to design an overlay structure
• F. Internal representation of data structures
• G. How to write an external assembly and or fortran procedure
• H. Specifying user exits
• I. Sample Job listing
• J. Catalogued procedures
• K. Report Procedure
• System 360/370 External Produre Library

The inevitable hello world example.

Here you find a sample program, a job written in Job Control Language to run it under MVS and the output.

The Hello world job file.

You may need to change the location of the simula.linklib and make other adaptions according to the requirements of you actual Job Entry System.

//SIMULA  JOB ,MSGLEVEL=(1,1),REGION=1024K
//*
//* This job compiles and runs a simula program
//* A simpler version of it is 
//*
//*    BEGIN outtext("Hello world"); outimage; END
//*
// EXEC PGM=SIMULA,PARM='INDENT=3,SYMBDUMP=3,RESWD=4,LIST,XREF'
//*
//* indent the listing 3 cols after each begin
//* creation symbolic dump information
//* uppercase reserved words, an first char uppercase known functions
//* show aseember listing
//* and cross references
//*
//STEPLIB DD DSN=HERC01.SIMULA.LINKLIB,DISP=SHR
//SYSPRINT DD SYSOUT=A
//SYSTERM DD SYSOUT=A
//SYSUT1  DD UNIT=VIO,DISP=(NEW,DELETE),SPACE=(3200,(20,20))
//SYSUT2  DD UNIT=VIO,DISP=(NEW,DELETE),SPACE=(3200,(20,20))
//SYSUT3  DD UNIT=VIO,DISP=(NEW,DELETE),SPACE=(3200,(20,20))
//SYSUT4  DD UNIT=SYSDA,DISP=(NEW,DELETE),SPACE=(1024,256),
// DCB=DSORG=DA
//SYSGO DD DSN=&&OBJ,DISP=(NEW,PASS,DELETE),
// UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(CYL,(1,1)),
// DCB=(RECFM=FB,LRECL=80,BLKSIZE=3120,DSORG=PS)
begin
class word(t); value t; text t; 
begin
while true do begin
detach;
outtext(t);
end 
end *** word ***;

ref(word) h,w;
h :- new word("Hello");
w :- new word("world");
resume(h);
outchar(' ');
resume(w);
outimage;

end of program
//GO EXEC PGM=LOADER,
// PARM='EP=ZYQENT,MAP,PRINT/DUMP=5,SYMBDUMP=6,TERM,TRACE=1' 
//*
//* maximum postmoretm dump in case of error
//* and symbolic dumps also
//* all debugging output to systerm
//* allow trace facility
//* 
//SYSLIN DD DSN=&&OBJ,DISP=(OLD,DELETE)
//SYSLIB DD DISP=SHR,DSN=HERC01.SIMULA.LINKLIB
//SYSLOUT DD SYSOUT=A
//SYSOUT DD SYSOUT=A
//SYSTERM DD SYSOUT=A
//

The output

It's rather long because all kinds of debbuging information output is enabled to show the features. The printer output created by hercules has been processed by the following perl:

#!/usr/bin/perl
print '<html><head><title>Simula Hello world</title></head><body bgcolor="#ffffe0">';
print "<tt>\n<pre>\n";
while (<STDIN>) {
  s|(\r)*\f(\n)*|</pre>\n<hr>\n<pre>|g;
  print;
}
print '</pre></tt></body></html>';

Bugs and Remedies

Don't expect me to correct errors in the system. I might try. But please send me your observations.

My second try was to produce a nice post-mortem dump using a program like BEGIN INTEGER i; i:= i/i; END This provoked a error that hit me during th 1970s an 1980s from time to time. Finally I got it: Thou shallst not try to access to a byte in a page that does't belong to you. The explanation: Assume register one pointing to the last word in a page UNPK 0(9,R2),0,5(R2) followed by a TRT of the first 8 octets and setting the 9th to blank. Works almost, but not for the last word in page where you cannot access the next. This editing technique is used in various parts of the run time system but without real consequences.

z/OS will experience

IEW2551E 4606 THE ENTRY NAME ZYQENT ON THE CURRENT OBJECT MODULE END
   RECORD IS NOT A DEFINED NAME IN THIS MODULE.

One remedy is to edit the object deck, change ZYQENT to blanks on the END card, and ensure to have EP=ZYQENT as part of the loader parameters. What to do for the linkage editor is left as an exercise. Thanks to Roger Bowler to provide this patch for the compiler to blank out the entry point in the generated object deck.

The runtime system also has a small year 2000 problem which doesn't prohibit execution. Look at when the sample program starts its execution, so one may assume that there were at least two programmers at work.

The language standards

There are several version of the Simula language. The 1986 version of the language standard is not fully supported by this Simula Compiler. Hidden and Protected is not really implemented for example, but that doesn't really hurt.

Some other material is waiting to be liberated into wilderness after getting scanned, registered, passported and tortured.

Simula I (fifth edition 1967)

• Title, Table of Content and Preface
• 1. SIMULATION AND DISCRETE EVENT SYSTEMS
• 2. PROCESSES
• 3. ELEMENTS AND SETS
• 4. SEQUENCING
• 5. CONNECTION
• 6. THE MAIN PROGRAM
• 7. RANDOM DRAWING
• 8. DATA ANALYSIS
• 9. THE SIMULA SYNTAX
• 10. THE UNIVAC 1107 SIMULA
• 11. ALGOL FUNDAMENTALS
• 12. A SIMPLE SIMULA DESCRIPTION
• 13. A WORKED EXAMPLE and ANNEX

The SIMULA 67 COMMON BASE LANGUAGE

This is scanned copy containing some hand-made annotations corresponding to corrections that have been made later. Each chapter really starts on on odd page number. No pages are missing.

• Title, Preface and Index
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Class Declarations
• 3. Types and Variables
• 4. Expressions
• 5. Relations
• 6. Statements
• 7. Remote accessing
• 8. Procedures and parameter transmission
• 9. Sequencing
• 10. The type "text"
• 11. Input-Output
• 12. Random Drawing
• 13. Utility Procedures
• 14. System Classes
• 15. Separate compilation
• 16. Common Base restrictions
• 17. Recommended Extensions
• 18. Features being investigated
• 19. References
• 20. Alphabetic Index of syntactical units

For implementers

The Simula Implementation Guide

• Title and Introduction
• 1. Introduction Compiler
• 2. Introduction Runtime system
• 3. Types
• 4. Sub-Blocks
• 5. Procedure Declaration
• 6. Class Declaration
• 7. Expressions
• 8. Actual parameters
• 9. Assignement
• 10. Denotes
• 11. Relations
• 12. For-Statements
• 13. Remote Identifiers
• 14. Connections
• 15. Block Prefixing
• 16. Sequenceing Statements
• 17. Labels and Switches
• 18. Random Drawing and Data Analysis
• 19. System Classes
• 20. Separate Compilation
• 21. Store Collapse
• 22. Formal Description of Simula Common Base Runtime System

Links

• Cetus Links - Simula - Includes FAQs, mailing lists, books, an FTP archive, and links to general articles.
• Montreal Simula Site - Designed to help with teaching and popularity by providing, eventually, a full online reference, and useful web pointers and access to Simula application software.
• Holmevik, J.R. (1994). "Compiling SIMULA: a historical study of technological genesis." IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 16 (4), p. 25-37, 1994. The article was also presented at the 18th ASU Conference in 1992, and published in the SIMULA Newsletter Vol.20(1), October 1992.
  According to Jaroslav.sklenar, Mr. Holmevik's permits to download a copy of his paper at Compiling SIMULA
• Gunnar Syrrist's Simula site
• Various versions for CIM are available at
  • http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/cim/
  • http://www.gnu.org/s/cim/
  • CIM for Windows - CIM for Windows download page

  Depending on your version of GCC, you may need to remove the obstack.[c|h] from the CIM source directory. The 4.3 version does not include a little patch of 3.37 that avoids an fclose twice, something that glibc doesn't really like.

• A GCC-based SIMULA Compiler
• Io is a prototype-based programming language inspired by Smalltalk.

Thanks to Максим Игоревич Соболев for some of the information and corrections to links.