Complete Set of IBM's CICS TS v 3.2 Manuals

[tdarcos]

You can get a complete set of PDFs of the manuals for CICS Transaction Server version 3.2 from this address;

http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/ ... S/DFHASJ04

To save the manuals for browsing off-line, right click on any of the links and click on "Save As" Note that these are the full printed manuals, they run hundreds of pages each and many are 2-3 megabytes in size.

Currently there are 52! manuals there.

A summary of some of the more useful ones would be (the underlined link item is the PDF, right click to save it). Yes, I know currently DB2 is not operational on Fandhezi, but it probably will be at some point.

CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3.2 CICS Application Programming Guide DFHP3C02 07/05/10 16:04:04 SC34-6818-02
CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3.2 CICS Application Programming Reference DFHP4C03 07/05/10 16:04:27 SC34-6819-03
CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3.2 CICS DB2 Guide DFHTKC03 07/05/10 16:07:31 SC34-6837-03
CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3.2 CICS Messages and Codes DFHG4C03 07/05/10 16:03:47 GC34-6827-03
CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3.2 CICS Supplied Transactions DFHA7C02 07/05/10 16:02:21 SC34-6817-02
CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3.2 IMS Database Control Guide DFHT4C03 07/07/10 09:37:50 SC34-6834-03

[prino]

If you take a look at the IBM Manuals link, you will see that it contains a link to a IBM Online Library: z/OS V1R13 and Software Products DVD Collection, Sept 2012 (SK3T-4271-31), a 5GB download of all z/OS V1R13 manuals...

[tdarcos]

If you take a look at the IBM Manuals link, you will see that it contains a link to a IBM Online Library: z/OS V1R13 and Software Products DVD Collection, Sept 2012 (SK3T-4271-31), a 5GB download of all z/OS V1R13 manuals...

That's fine except for two things.

1. My reference goes to a page with just the PDF manuals, and totals maybe 60 megabytes if you downloaded all the files there. 5 GB is a lot to download.
2. Your reference opens a page where you have to agree to some "sell your soul to Satan" 22,036 page EULA from IBM printed in 3 point Eyestrain font (Did you ever see the South Park NSFW episode about people agreeing to on-line EULAs that they don't even read and the disastrously sick and hilariously funny EULA that Apple Computer Imposes on some people?) There may be some things people don't want like Bookreader files. The page I point to allows downloading of just the PDFs without agreeing to any terms of any kind. No EULA consent required. No EULA at all. ("And it's no sacrifice / No sacrifice / No sacrifice at all" - Elton John).

[prino]

If you don't want to agree to EULA's of any kind, just go to the IBM Library Server Library...

As for a 5GB, my monthly volume is unlimited, my ISP doesn't even show me any more how much I've used, and this month it's likely to be well in excess of 100Gb.

[steve-myers]

I, personally, find PDF manuals to be of limited use to read on a PC. They do print quite nicely, but the nature of my handicap makes dealing with paper quite difficult. In any event, who wants to print reams of paper? The IBM Manuals link provided by Prino mostly has Bookie reader manuals accessed through a web server that are much more usable than PDF to read online, though there are some annoying ommisions. The last I checked, for example, z/OS V2R1 manuals aren't there.

[tdarcos]

I, personally, find PDF manuals to be of limited use to read on a PC.

I read PDFs on my PC all the time. I find them extremely useful. Occasionally if I'm doing a lot of page work, I'll turn my monitor 90 degrees and run it in portrait mode (both the monitor and the card support it), but most of the time I view stuff in landscape. If I'm writing letters then it's useful to see the document as it would look on paper but otherwise I don't bother turning it.

They do print quite nicely, but the nature of my handicap

Whatever you've got, I've got it worse. I'm blind in one eye, have carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand making it impossible to bend my wrist (to prevent pain if I shake hands I use my left hand), and both my knees are non-load bearing so I'm in a power wheelchair. Plus I'm 6'2" and weigh about 450 pounds. You wanna trade excuses, I've got lots of them!

makes dealing with paper quite difficult.

Paper? What is that? Outside of the occasional incoming e-mail I need to have a copy because I have to reference it off-line (like an invitation to a conference that has an address or a reservation number) I do almost everything on-line (on the computer, not necessarily on the Internet). I have two scanners, a $30 Epson color inkjet that is light enough to pick up and take with me, that will scan 8 1/2x11 and might do 8 1/2 x 14 (haven't tried it), and a $100 HP all-in-one color print/scan/fax I got as a Christmas present two years ago that has a document feeder that will handle up to 30 pages at a time.

I'm trying something new this month. Take bank statements, credit card statements and instead of letting paper pile up or filing it, scan it into my computer and let the images pile up! Take the originals and throw them away. (Most of them I don't have to do anything with, I bury them in the recycling and most don't include account numbers (my credit union only prints the last four digits of my account number on my statement). If they do include anything I go over it with a magic marker which is cheaper than buying a shredder.)

My intent is to stop letting paper pile up so that every month or so a bunch of mail of routine items and junk mail doesn't turn into 5 pounds of paper I have to go through, sort, then dump in recycling, essentially I want to take junk mail, trash it immediately if it's not interesting, process it if it is, or scan it if I might need it. Same thing for important mail like credit cards and bank statements, and then trash those after I've scanned them. Handle a piece of paper once and either scan and trash important papers, file if I have to save it (like the agreement documents for credit cards and documents valuable in and of themselves like corporate charters, social security and medicare cards, notary public commissions and birth certificates), or trash it without saving if I don't.

Handle an incoming paper document once and get rid of it. Scan and trash, file, or trash.

Although I'm not sure what to do when I run out of disk space. Buy more I guess. I currently have 9 terabytes of disk space here, and I'm down to my last 7 1/2 available. I have a 1 TB Buffalo NAS with "only" 350 GB free where I basically store almost all my documents and everything I download, a few working documents get stored on my personal computer which has its own internal 1 TB drive. I have another computer that used to have Windows XP on it, the OS failed and I'm not sure if I want to bother rebuilding it. It has a 2 TB drive; I'm probably going to convert it to Linux, there's a distribution called AV Linux which is supposed to have really good video editing tools; I currently run it with a Live CD install on a 16 GB SD card in a $2 converter that turns it into a USB jump drive. Connected to the machine I am using is a 3 TB USB drive that i backed up the files on the 2TB and the Buffalo NAS and anything on this machine that's important, it has 1.78 TB free.

I also own a Macintosh OS X desktop, a 32-bit PowerPC I got for $100 plus shipping so I could get my feet wet with OS X 10 for not a lot of money. I was able to download the USB drivers for a $9 Tenda wireless adapter and install Firefox and VLC on it, plus a few other things, so it sits out in the living room, and the only two things plugged into it were a power cord and the network adapter. When I need to use it I either connect to the Apache web server running on it or I connect to its desktop using VLC over my network. I later got a really good deal on ebay on an external hard drive, since it "only" has a 50 GB drive, I have a 2TB USB plugged into it. So now it has 3 things. I did have to buy a(n expensive $30) monitor cord so I could set it up, but now it runs fine with no mouse, keyboard or monitor, I do everything through a VLC window on my Windows desktop.

In any event, who wants to print reams of paper?

Print reams of paper? I think I run about 5 pages a month not including envelopes. I do almost everything electronically. I have to mail about 6 envelopes a month, so I print nice personalized ones.

The IBM Manuals link provided by Prino mostly has Bookie reader manuals

I think the electronic manuals IBM issued are called "Book Reader." Isn't Bookie Reader what you do when you're decoding betting slips?

accessed through a web server that are much more usable than PDF to read online, though there are some annoying ommisions. The last I checked, for example, z/OS V2R1 manuals aren't there.

z/OS V2R1 information center (September 2013): http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/zos/v2r1/index.jsp and I believe the manuals there are accessible through a web interface in "tree" form. (Tree as in "drill down" not as in "the dead items paper is made from.")

[tdarcos]

If you don't want to agree to EULA's of any kind, just go to the IBM Library Server Library...

As for a 5GB, my monthly volume is unlimited, my ISP doesn't even show me any more how much I've used, and this month it's likely to be well in excess of 100Gb.

Comcast used to not tell people, they just cut you off, but they got in trouble over that so now they admit their limit is 250GB a month. I'm sure I probably don't even use as much as you're doing - no way to tell as I don't pay the bill, I just had the landlord add Internet to our cable because since he's already a customer he could get it cheaper than I could, and I pay him for the extra charge - but I try to reduce my load so I don't hit the cap by accident.

[steve-myers]

IBM called their BookManager Reader program the Bookie reader. It was (and is, in my opinion) far more usable than Acrobat reader, especially on slower CPUs. The newer versions of Acrobat reader seem to be much faster, but some of that has to do with faster CPUs.