This site will walk you through the installation of DOS/360, an early IBM mainframe operating system.
At the end of this process, you'll have a working DOS/360 system with virtual 2314 disk drives, spooling, Sort/Merge, operating system utilities, and the following languages: Assembler, COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/I, and RPG. Both COBOL and FORTRAN came in two versions on DOS/360, and both versions of each will be present in the generated system.
This site is an interactive history exhibit. The System/360 debuted a computing architecture that has lasted better than 50 years, and DOS/360 was the first broadly-deployed operating system for the 360. By following the instructions here, you'll build a working DOS/360 system just as it was in the 1960's.
Note that IBM mainframe DOS has nothing to do with IBM PC DOS or its successors; while both were "Disk Operating Systems" and use disk drives to store the operating system, the similarity ends there.
If you wish to do real work on an emulated mainframe, there are better choices. DOS/VS installations for Hercules exist for those with a DOS background. Turnkey distributions of MVS 3.8j exist, and Jay Moseley has built an excellent tutorial web site for building MVS 3.8j from distribution materials. For doing "real" applications work, DOS/VS and MVS will serve you better than DOS/360.
It will be helpful when following these instructions if you have IBM mainframe experience, particularly experience that includes any flavor of IBM DOS software such as DOS/VS, DOS/VSE, VSE/AF. If you have OS/360 or successor system experience, you should be OK, but there's a lot that OS/360 did that DOS/360 never did.
You will need to know--or learn--something about Hercules 390, an open source application that emulates IBM mainframes from the original System/360 through the System z. The Hercules 390 web sites include plenty of good information and examples, and PDF documentation files exist, enabling offline reading.
You will need to install Hercules 390, an open source application that emulates IBM mainframes from the original System/360 through the System z. Version 3.07 is available in source form from multiple mirrors and has been packaged for installation on Windows, Mac, Debian, and RedHat Linux. Version 3.11 has been packaged for Windows. The current version of Hercules can be found here: http://hercules-390.github.io/html/.
Hercules 390 version 3.11 was used to develop and verify instructions and files on this site; Hercules 390 version 3.12--the current version--also has been tested. Development and testing was done on a six year old Dell Inspiron laptop--32 bit, 4GB of RAM, and a 450GB SSD--running Windows 7 Home Premium, and later Windows 10.
When you complete this installation, you will have completed a walk through history; this is the way computers used to work and were used.
Have fun! Start Here.