I believe that the basic ECKD stuff is pretty much the same for everybody, but if you have to deal with the various remote copy and mirroring options then you need documentation specific to the gear that you're using.
-- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי נֵ֣צַח יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל לֹ֥א יְשַׁקֵּ֖ר ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List <[email protected]> on behalf of Steve Marak <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, July 19, 2024 4:36 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Looking for a good book on ECKD EXCP, CCWs, etc. Tony, I wished for the book you wanted in the original post many times and never found it. I wound up cobbling together a bunch of sources. The PoP was essential for the basics of the channel subsystem, but you have to go to the various device manuals for anything specific to them. For ECKD, the only authoritative references I found were the storage controller (what we used to call the control unit) references. I started with the 3990 Storage Control Reference, which IIRC was strangely hard to find as a PDF - I had a tattered hardcopy I kept locked away in my office for years. Later I used the IBM Enterprise Storage Server System/390 Command Reference 2105 Models E10, E20, F10, and F20 (SC26-7298) - newer, though it's old now too, and it was available in PDF. Some of the equivalent manuals for other brands of ECKD storage subsystems also have good information but as usual be very careful about applying it beyond the hardware for which it was written. Those are good for technical details of the various CCWs, error conditions, and sense information, but they had no practical examples. I was fortunate to always have VM systems available, and I shamelessly scrounged through the optional source code to see how the IBM developers coded their channel programs, and learned a lot. I also found some interesting channel programs in the sources for the Linux z distros - not all of the device specific stuff is closed source. The Hercules project also has some good stuff online. I wrote a lot of channel programs that ran on z/OS or its precursors, but even allowing for my VM bias I believe it's a lot easier to learn this stuff, and debug when you're doing something new, by experimenting on VM. You're a lot closer to the action, the CP diagnose interface allows you to execute channel programs synchronously with CP handling the interrupts and gathering sense info for you, the CP tracing facilities are very powerful and helpful, and CP provides extremely strong isolation that kept me from ever shooting anyone's feet but my own. Saved me huge amounts of time. Good luck! Steve On 7/19/2024 12:45 PM, Tony Thigpen wrote: > SA22-1025-00 > Internal Disk Subsystem: > Reference Guide > Multiprise 3000 Enterprise Server > > Tony Thigpen > > Michael Watkins wrote on 7/19/24 1:29 PM: >> What is the full title of the 'MP3k' book? Is it an IBM document? >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List <[email protected]> >> On Behalf Of Tony Thigpen >> Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2024 5:57 PM >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: Re: Looking for a good book on ECKD EXCP, CCWs, etc. >> >> CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the Texas >> Comptroller's email system. >> DO NOT click links or open attachments unless you expect them from >> the sender and know the content is safe. >> >> Thanks Ed. I do have that book. It's actually better indexed than the >> other book I was using as a reference even though the MP3K book was >> dated a few months earlier. >> >> Tony Thigpen >> >> Ed Jaffe wrote on 7/18/24 5:46 PM: >>> The reference I learned from was the MP3000 book describing the CCWs >>> available on its integrated SSD RAID DASD. >>> >>> On 7/18/2024 1:13 PM, Tony Thigpen wrote: >>>> I have several books that include basic EXCP/CCW dasd programming, >>>> but nothing that I would consider 'deep' enough on ECKD programming. >>>> Some of the books I have are were good with CKD, but not ECKD. >>>> >>>> So, I am looking for suggestions for books that are designed to teach >>>> someone complex ECKD programming within the restrictions imposed by >>>> the OS. >>>> >>>> Tony Thigpen >>>> >>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> ---------- This e-mail message, including any attachments, appended >>> messages and the information contained therein, is for the sole use of >>> the intended recipient(s). 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