Planet MVS MVSintosh :: MVS and Macintosh Tritus/SPF on the Macintosh (using DOSBox)

Configuring Tritus/SPF to work on the Macintosh using DOSBOX Tritus/SPF is a very good implementation of the mainframe ISPF editor that ran on AIX, MS/DOS, OS/2 and Windows. It is no longer available for sale. TRITUS SPF - The SPF text editor that brings the power of the mainframe to the PC Macintosh! Will work with any IBM compatible PC (and now the Mac!) with any type of memory, in DOS and OS/2. Fully compatible with Windows (and now the Mac!)

My Tritus/SPF Installation method using DOSBox

• DOSBox v0.65 - 2007-01-31 on Mac OS X 10.4.8, 1 x 1.6 PPC G5
• DOSBox v0.72 - 2007-08-27 on Mac OS X 10.4.10 2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon

• Download DOSBox
  
  
• Open the dmg file and drag the DOSBox icon to your applications folder
  
  
• Create a folder called "DOSBox" in your user directory.
  
  On my system, if I execute the pwd (Print Working Directory) command in the Mac Terminal application while in that directory, I see:

  /Users/dave/DOSBox

  This is the same directory as: "~/DOSBox" which is used in the rest of this guide.
  
  
• Copy your Tritus directory from your CDRom backup, USB drive, zip file, etc to your newly created DOSBox directory: ~/DOSBox. Mine is called "tispf". "~/DOSBox/tispf" will be your C: drive in DOSBox.
  
  
• Create a directory which will be your D drive. Mine is called "data". So this is my D Drive in DOSBox: "~/DOSBox/data".
  
  I guess DOSBox has a problem with a directory that is empty so exited DOSBox, created a text file in "~/DOSBOx/data" called dave.txt. After restarting DOSBox I could access this directory as the "D" drive in DOSBox. So, I suggest you put a file, any file in your "D" directory
  
  
• If I do a "ls -al" in the ~/DOSBox directory:
  
  

  Daves-Computer:~/DOSBox dave$ ls -al total 16 drwxr-xr-x 5 dave dave 170 Jan 31 23:25 . drwxr-xr-x 48 dave dave 1632 Feb 1 00:07 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 dave dave 6148 Jan 31 23:53 .DS_Store drwxr-xr-x 5 dave dave 170 Jan 31 23:53 data drwxr-xr-x 171 dave dave 5814 Mar 26 2005 tispf

  
  
• Start DOSBox by double clicking it from the applications folder. You will be at a Z: prompt.
  
  
• Mount your Tritus/SPF directory as the C: Drive:

  mount c ~/DOSBox/tispf

  
  
  
• Ensure that the dir command in your Tritus directory works

  c:
  dir

• Mount your data directory as the D: Drive:

  mount d ~/DOSBox/data

• Ensure that the dir command in your data directory works

  d:
  dir

• Write out the vanilla config file to get a good starting one to modify:

  config -writeconf /Users/yourname/DOSBox/dosbox.conf

  Note: for some reason it wouldn't take ~/DOSBox/dosbox.conf
  
  
• exit (to terminate DOSBox)
  
  
• edit ~/DOSBox/dosbox.conf with your favorite editor
  
  
• At the end of the config files is a section [autoexec], Add these lines there:
  • mount c ~/DOSBox/tispf
  • mount d ~/DOSBox/data
  • c:
  • tspfl
  For example:
  
  

  [autoexec] # Lines in this section will be run at startup. mount c ~/DOSBox/tispf mount d ~/DOSBox/data c: tspfl

  
  
• Save the config file as: ~/Library/Preferences/DOSBox Preferences
  
  
• Verify you have this file using the Terminal application:

  cd ~/Library/Preferences
  ls -al DOSBox* 
  

  You should see the "DOSBox Preferences" file, for example:

  Daves-Computer:~ dave$ cd ~/Library/Preferences
  Daves-Computer:~/Library/Preferences dave$ ls -al DOSBox*
  -rw-r--r--   1 dave  dave  5927 Feb  1 00:11 DOSBox Preferences
  Daves-Computer:~/Library/Preferences dave$ 
  

• Now when you double click DOSBox in the applications folder, you should start Tritus/SPF! Cool Beans!
  
  

  (click picture for larger desktop picture)

  Random things: Remember that the Right Control key is your Enter key in Tritus. To terminate DOSBox: =x C:\>exit Cons: No long file names No Windows or OS/2 clipboard

  
  
  
• When you get frustrated by byte oriented editors, drag the file (with a 8.3 byte name) to your "D:" Drive (~/DOSBox/data) and click on DOSBox.

Disclaimers

Copyrights, Trademarks and other lawyer stuff:

• MVS, OS/390, and z/OS (and possibly other words on this page) are owned by IBM.
• Macintosh (and probably other words on this page) are trademarked by Apple.
• Tritus SPF^TM is probably still owned by Tritus, Inc of Austin Texas, *or* the former owners of Tritus Inc (if they haven't killed each other) *or* somebody's divorce lawyer *or* somebody's cat but Tritus SPF^TM is not owned by me.
• Other terms are owned by their respective copyright/trademark owners.