FreeBSD on the Mainframe
The pet ^H^H^HFrankenstein project
Contact: BjoernZeeb
At the moment this is a placeholder page which needs a lot more details over time, original names, references, ... some which is beyond my knowledge
In the early 2000s there was a s390 projects branch in the FreeBSD Perforce repository 1. The s390 (32bit) port made on a good day made it to single-user and beyond. A s390x (64bit) port was in progress though I don't know its last state.
During the FreeBSD 5 times, BjoernZeeb started to update the perforce repo to the latest FreeBSD. Back then the emulators/hercules port was used for testing.
Over the years there were multiple efforts to revive the port, often stalled again due to missing access to a proper development environment or access to hardware where FreeBSD could be IPLed, support, or funding.
One of the lasts attempts was done in early 2017 (status report).
In 2019 interest in the project was revived and we are currently in the progress of updating the previous efforts to FreeBSD HEAD (FreeBSD 13). On 2019-08-07 the "s390x-binutils child port" 2 from PR 215939 was committed as a first step to provide a development platform.