C410 z/OS Assembler Programming Part 1: Beginnings

Course Code: C-410
Recommended Duration: 5 Days

Benefits

Students who complete this course will be able to write or maintain basic Assembler programs. The emphasis is on learning all the hardware instructions used by applications programmers as well as learning the basic interfaces to MVS or OS/390 from Assembler language programs.

Audience

Experienced programmers needing to learn Assembler as an additional language or who need a refresher in Assembler. This course may also be used to teach Assembler as a first language, but it should probably be extended to seven days.

Prerequisites

At the very least the student entering this course should have background in using ISPF/PDF or similar product used for creating programs and submitting jobs. Some experience in writing programs in a third generation language such as COBOL, PL/I, FORTRAN, or C.

Related IBM Materials

This course is drawn from these IBM manuals; access to them in the classroom is required (via hardcopy, BookManager, etc.):

SA22-7201 - Principles of Operation
GX20-0406 - Reference Summary (supplied with the course)
SC26-4940 - High Level Assembler reference

Major Topics Include

Hardware fundamentals (registers, memory, addressing)
Machine instructions
The Assembler
Data formats (character, packed decimal, binary)
Working with files and program linkages
Calculations: rounding, editing, planning results (significant digits, implied decimal positions)
Loops and tables
Multiple base registers
DSECTs, ORG, and EQU

Exercises

There are 14 hands-on exercises

Notes

This course covers the Assembler and the application-programmer oriented hardware instructions that have been available from the introduction of the S/360 and that were added over the first 20 years or so of the architecture. It is estimated that 90% of existing Assembler applications use only the instructions covered in this course.
We do not cover any instructions in these categories: floating point, vector, privileged, semi-privileged.
The course integrates features of the High Level Assembler (HLASM) through V1.3.
The follow on courses are "z/OS Assembler Programming Part 2: Interfaces", "z/OS Assembler Programming Part 3: Update", and "z/OS Assembler Programming Part 4: z/Architecture and z/OS".

Course Description

z/OS Assembler Programming Part 1: Beginnings