IBM Mainframe Forum

Hi,

I am new in this mainframe field and i want to do cobol practice from home .....but i dont know what to do for it (i mean what do i need to install ...compiler...emulator or what)....and what other things like tcp/ip connection or registration code is necessary in this field or any other thing....Can anybody help regarding this.....Many thanks for the help....

There are free COBOL compilers available (hint: Google is your friend). You can use Hercules on your home machine as a mainframe emulator. However, you should be aware that IBM copyrights its software and it is not generally legal (without paying many thousands of dollars) to run any recent (in the last 20-30 years) version of z/OS, OS/390, or earlier operating systems on Hercules or other emulators. This is quite adequate for learning COBOL and so forth, but not if you're wanting to learn current system software.