MVS Turnkey system

The MVS Turnkey system tutorial

The MVS Turnkey system is a ready-to-use Mainframe system. Also, it is totally FREE. In this tutorial, I will give you a complete overview of how you can download, install, and use this system. So, let’s start

Download and Install the MVS Turnkey System

The system is available at the following link:

https://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/    

if the above link does not work then use the mirror link: 

https://wotho.pebble-beach.ch/tk4-/
MVS Turnkey Homepage
MVS Turnkey Homepage

At the bottom of the page you will find the link to the latest Turnkey system called:

tk4-_v1.00_current.zip

So, click on it to download the system which is a zip file of 227 MB size. Extract this zip file using any of the unzipping software you have such as Winzip, Winrar, or 7-zip.

MVS TK4 system zip file of size 227 MB
MVS TK4 system zip file of size 227 MB
Extracted MVS Turnkey system
Extracted MVS Turnkey system

By default, the console mode is off on this system. So, you have to activate it by going inside the folder called unattended. There you will find a file called set_console_mode.bat. Double click this file and the console mode will become active.

Double click on set console mode to activate the console
Double click on set console mode to activate the console
console mode has been activated
Console mode has been activated

This completes your installation. Let us now boot this system up.

Boot the MVS Turnkey system

Go to your extracted folder and double click on this file called mvs.bat. This will start booting up the system.

double click on mvs.bat to boot up your MVS Turnkey system
Double click on mvs.bat to boot up your MVS Turnkey system
MVS Turnkey system is now Booting up
MVS Turnkey system is now Booting up

If you press the ESCAPE key then you will be able to see the details of the system such as the Peripherals connected, MIPS of the mainframe, CPU Percentage, etc. Press the ESCAPE key again and you will come back to the console.

If you press the ESCAPE key, then you will be able to see the peripherals connected on this mainframe
If you press the ESCAPE key, then you will be able to see the peripherals connected on this mainframe

When you see a cat and a TK4- symbol then that means the bootup process has now finished. This is what it will look like:

The Bootup process is now finished
The Bootup process is now finished

Let us now connect to our Mainframe.

Let’s connect to our Mainframe using a 3270 Emulator

For this, you can use any of the 3270 emulators available in the market. Since the Vista TN3270 emulator is one of the most used Emulators, I will use this one. So, open the Vista Terminal emulator and give the IP address as localhost and Port number as 3270.

IP Address  : localhost
Port number : 3270
Give IP address as localhost and port as 3270 to connect to your MVS turnkey system
Give IP address as localhost and port as 3270 to connect to your MVS turnkey system
We are now connected to our MVS Turnkey system
We are now connected to our MVS Turnkey system

If instead of the above screen you see a screen like the below, then just give TSO in that screen and press the Enter screen. It will then ask for your Username and password.

MVS Turnkey Login screen
MVS Turnkey Log in screen

Congrats !!! We are now connected to our MVS Turnkey system. Let us now log in. Click anywhere on the screen and it will ask for a Username. Give the below username and password to log in to the system.

Username: HERC01
Password: CUL8TR
Enter your username here which is HERC01
Enter your username here which is HERC01
username is HERC01
Username is HERC01
Enter your password in the next screen which is CUL8TR
Enter your password in the next screen which is CUL8TR
You will now be logged in to the system
You will now be logged in to the system
Wisdom screen on the system. The system always greet you with a quote like this.
Wisdom screen on the system. The system always greets you with a quote like this.
We are now logged in to the system
We are now logged in to the system

If instead of the TSO Applications you see a READY prompt then just give the command TSOAPPLS to go to the TSO applications.

Give tsoappls in the READY prompt to go to the TSO applications
Give tsoappls in the READY prompt to go to the TSO applications

Different Operations on MVS Turnkey system

Generate a Data set List using option 3.4

On z/OS we use 3.4 for getting a data set list. Similarly, on the MVS Turnkey system, we have an option called RFE. It stands for Review Front End and is meant to be a substitute for ISPF.

RFE option in the MVS Turnkey system
RFE option in the MVS Turnkey system
RFE option to see the data set list
RFE option to see the data set list

We can give here 3.4 which takes us to the data set list. Now I can give the prefix I want such as SYS1, which will show me the data sets whose names start with SYS1.

Give here 3.4 to get your dataset list
Give here 3.4 to get your data set list
here give prefix such as SYS1 to see all the datasets starting with SYS1
here give prefix such as SYS1 to see all the data sets starting with SYS1
Dataset list in RFE is now listed
Data set list of data sets starting with SYS1 is now listed in RFE

Allocate a Data set using option 3.2

Now to create a data set the option is the same as ISPF that is option 3.2

option 3.2 will create a new data set
option 3.2 will create a new data set
allocate new dataset screen
allocate new data set screen
dataset has now been allocated
data set has now been allocated

Submit a JCL using the submit command

To submit a JCL we can give the submit command in the command line.

submit command
submit command
job has been submitted
JOB has been submitted
JOB has given a return code of 8
JOB has given a return code of 8

Check the output of this JOB using option 3.8 – OUTLIST

If you want to check the output of the JCL then you can use option 3.8. This option 3.8 is the substitute for SDSF. Here we can see our JOB output. Now to see the JOB output just give s in front of the JOB that you just executed. Then, it will show the JOB details and the output produced from the JOB.

OUTLIST option to see the JOB output
OUTLIST option to see the JOB output
OUTLIST job details
OUTLIST job details
Give s in front of the JOBNAME to see the JOB details
Give s in front of the JOBNAME to see the JOB details
You will now see the details of this JOB
You will now see the details of this JOB

Conclusion

There are multiple reasons why this system is not sufficient to learn Mainframes. It does not have subsystems such as CICS and DB2. These subsystems are absolutely essential if you want to learn about Mainframes. VSAM is also not available. Hence we need to get access to a real Mainframe. I have written a detailed post on how you can get FREE access to a Mainframe. You can read that article here.

As a thank you for my efforts, you can also consider buying my course on Udemy, which is around $10 only. You will get 19+ hours of Mainframe tutorial which will teach you TSO, ISPF, JCL, COBOL, CICS, Unix System Services, and VSAM. You can follow this referral link to buy my course. Link: https://www.udemy.com/course/the-complete-mainframe-professional-course-tso-ispf/?referralCode=F35DCE84EBFDE975A112

tso course image
The Complete Mainframe Professional Course

Hope this post was informative to you. See you in another post.

17 comments

  1. Sir, the site wotho.ethz.ch is not working properly. Kindly give me the mvs turnkey zip via any other method like dropbox or google drive. Please, I wish to learn mainframe.

  2. This is not working. After put username I cant put password because the screen appears ” IKT00405I SCREEN ERASURE CAUSED BY ERROR RECOVERY PROCEDURE”

  3. I would disagree with your acessment of tk4, you can learn a lot from tk4.
    I was a college teacher and a trade school teacher and business trainer.
    The MVS operating system was a semester course when it was taught
    in colleges. It is the first place to start!!! you must learn te OS JCL before
    anything else! Tk4 is a fantastic system it is 100 times faster than a real
    IBM 1970’s, 1980’s mainframe. I use it along with visual studio everyday
    to do cobol and rpg work. Visual studio and linux for web and c c++
    and python work. I remember back in the 1980’s when I paid $40 to $100 dollars
    per hour to rent a mainframe. Now I have 5 “mvs mainframes” working for 20 cents
    per hour worth of electricity! Good luck with your course!
    The ibm “free courses” I have seen are just garbage!!!

  4. One more comment: Ibm purchased RED HAT and is just another linux company,
    nothing special!! That tells you their thinking that linux and microsoft are the operating
    systems of the future! NOT IBM. SO learn linux administration and scripting and windows
    server sdministration and scripting!! Do not put a lot of effort into ibm software.
    Still tk4 mvs is great if you have a use for it.

  5. Hi dear teacher,
    I’m not that experienced with computers. I’ve having a trouble, once downloaded mvs turnkey. And followed the steps you said in the video of your course. I could not find “set_console_mode.bat” or mvs.bat
    What can I do?
    I used the “https://wotho.pebble-beach.ch/tk4-/”

    Thanks in advance. Have a nice day!

  6. Guys… Please help…

    I’m running this on a Raspberry Pi 5 ( Debian 12 Bookworm) aarch64 under Hercules 4.6.0.

    After issuing the “./mvs” I’m receiving the error :
    “./mvs: line 49: hercules/linux/32/bin/hercules: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error”

    Seems to me it’s expecting to run on a 32bit environment. Is this it?

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