IBM Mainframe Forum

Hello and welcome to the forum,

You Did notice that possibly the most important part of the request is that it needs to be Free. . .

Here is a place to look:
http://cobug.com/

Have a look at cobol-it.com.
Free, -85 standard COBOL compiler.

Personally, I've been impressed with Open COBOL (http://www.opencobol.org) as it supports almost all of the Enterprise COBOL syntax, allows for indexed files, and there's little conversion effort needed to get Enterprise COBOL programs to run under Open COBOL (at least running under Cygwin on Windows, that is).

Hi Mahesh-

You might try downloading Hercules and MVS 3.8, and run it on your personal desktop. Try searching Volker Bandke's Turnkey MVS OS.

Thanks,
Quasar

Hello,

For someone who is not quite well-versed in the mainframe environment, i would not recommend trying to do this with Hercules.

As the TS just wants to practice COBOL, an entire mainframe should not be necessary. . .