Is IBM dropping support for RPG36 in near future?

[Guest.Visitor]

I have recently heard (within the last three months) that IBM would be dropping support for RPG36 in one of the next 2-3 OS/400 releases in the near future. I also heard that IBM was dropping suppport on the Advanced 36. Has anyone heard anything other than rumors? I used to work for a consulting firm and saws a lot of companies that still were running in the S36 environment. There must be quite a few still out there .. or not. T. A. Burke

[Guest.Visitor]

I think it has already been dropped! (in the UK al least)

[David Abramowitz]

Thomas Burke wrote: I used to work for a consulting firm and saws a lot of companies that still were running in the S36 environment That never stopped IBM from trying to pull the plug. IBM knows the resistance that they will meet on this one, and although I'm sure they would love to pull the plug, they dare not do it at this time. AFAIK, there are no official plans to stop S/36 environment support, now or in the future. Dave

[D.Handy]

Thomas, "Has anyone heard anything other than rumors?" I suspect your rumor source was confused over hearing IBM is dropping support for *M36 machines. This is where SSP runs as a guest operating system and you can run actual S/36 load modules, etc. For all practical purposes a *M36 is like a super-charged S/36. This is entirely different than source member type RPG36 compiled to run under OS/400 in the S/36 execution environment (S36EE). I have not heard of any plans to drop support for the S36EE, and have heard some IBM'ers specifically say it is not going away -- only the *M36 virtual machines. BTW, the last release to support *M36 was V4R4, so this has already happened. Perhaps by "near future" the rumor source was referring to the fact official support for V4R4 will be end someday. I'm on V4R5, and the S36EE is still alive and well. Doug

[Guest.Visitor]

Thanks for your comments. (I have moved this to the S/36 category.)