# Hercules Version 3: Technical Support

## Paid Support

Hercules does not have any official (formal) paid support in place...

...HOWEVER...

I'm sure if you ask the group whether or not there's anyone out there willing to provide it, you'll probably get more than one response. `;-)`

I know for a fact that at least one person is already providing Hercules Technical Support on a paid basis, and as I said, I'm sure there are probably others out there who are either already doing it, or at least willing to do it, too. All you have to do is ask (any of the people involved with Hercules (users and/or developers)) and I'm sure more than one would be willing to provide it to you for a reasonable agreed-upon fee.

Your best approach for obtaining fee-paid tecnical support for Hercules would be to post an inquiry to the main Hercules-390 forum (see next section below) and simply ask whether anyone out there would be willing to provide it. As I said, I'm sure there are probably many people out there who would be willing to do so for the right price.

## Free Support

Since Hercules is an Open Source product owned by no one in particular and copyrighted by many (lots of very sharp people have contributed over the years to Hercules's success), there doesn't exist any type of official "Technical Support Department" within any type of company or anything (like there usually is for closed-source products).

Instead, as with most Open Source products, there simply exists a dedicated group of individuals and enthusiasts who are willing to put in their spare time helping others with whatever problems and/or questions others may have regarding it. This dedicated group of Hercules enthusiasts is known as "our user community", and it honestly does, in this author's opinion, a pretty darn good job at providing whatever technical support most people find themselves needing.

If your question and/or concern regarding Hercules is not already addressed in our FAQ (and/or within the many other areas of Hercules source-code and/or documentation (you did read it all, didn't you??)), then you might consider posting your question to either the main Hercules-390 forum or one of the more "focused" forums discussed next:

>         HERCULES-390:   Discussion group for users of the Hercules ESA/390 mainframe emulator

>             Community email addresses:

>                 Post message:  hercules-390@yahoogroups.com
>                 Subscribe:     hercules-390-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 Unsubscribe:   hercules-390-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 List owner:    hercules-390-owner@yahoogroups.com

>             Files and archives at:

>                 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390

The Hercules-390 forum is your primary source for free Hercules support, and you are strongly encouraged to subscribe. We have a vibrant, active community of over 5000+ members, many of which are very knowledgeable in many different areas of mainframe technology, both from a hardware point of view as well as from an operating system and software point of view.

In addition to the main Hercules-390 forum, other more specialized Hercules forums also exist to provide more focused support for a variety of popular IBM mainframe operating systems, such as DOS, VM, and MVS:

Note: the use of Yahoo! as host for the Hercules-390 and related forums should in no way be interpreted as an endorsement of the Yahoo! service.

>         H390-DOSVS:   DOS/VS and DOS/VSE under Hercules

>             Community email addresses:

>                 Post message:  h390-dosvs@yahoogroups.com
>                 Subscribe:     h390-dosvs-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 Unsubscribe:   h390-dosvs-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 List owner:    h390-dosvs-owner@yahoogroups.com

>             Files and archives at:

>                 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/h390-dosvs

>         H390-MVS:   Hercules-390 users whom are trying to run MVS

>             Community email addresses:

>                 Post message:  h390-mvs@yahoogroups.com
>                 Subscribe:     h390-mvs-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 Unsubscribe:   h390-mvs-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 List owner:    h390-mvs-owner@yahoogroups.com

>             Files and archives at:

>                 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/h390-mvs

>         TURNKEY-MVS:   Support for Volker Bandke's "MVS Tur(n)key System", a freely available
>                        pre-built MVS 3.8J Operating System running under the Hercules emulator!

>             Community email addresses:

>                 Post message:  turnkey-mvs@yahoogroups.com
>                 Subscribe:     turnkey-mvs-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 Unsubscribe:   turnkey-mvs-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 List owner:    turnkey-mvs-owner@yahoogroups.com

>             Files and archives at:

>                 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/turnkey-mvs

>         H390-VM:   Hercules-390 users that are trying to run VM/370, VM/SP, & VM/ESA

>             Community email addresses:

>                 Post message:  h390-vm@yahoogroups.com
>                 Subscribe:     h390-vm-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 Unsubscribe:   h390-vm-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 List owner:    h390-vm-owner@yahoogroups.com

>             Files and archives at:

>                 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/h390-vm

>         HERC-4PACK:   Support for Andy Norrie's 4 pack Hercules VM system.

>             Community email addresses:

>                 Post message:  herc-4pack@yahoogroups.com
>                 Subscribe:     herc-4pack-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 Unsubscribe:   herc-4pack-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 List owner:    herc-4pack-owner@yahoogroups.com

>             Files and archives at:

>                 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/herc-4pack

>         HERCULES-390-ANNOUNCE:   General announcements regarding the Hercules-390 emulator

>             Community email addresses:

>                 Post message:  hercules-390-announce@yahoogroups.com
>                 Subscribe:     hercules-390-announce-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 Unsubscribe:   hercules-390-announce-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 List owner:    hercules-390-announce-owner@yahoogroups.com

>             Files and archives at:

>                 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390-announce

>         HERCULES-ADVOCACY:   Advocacy of issues relating to the Hercules emulator for IBM mainframe systems.

>             Community email addresses:

>                 Post message:  hercules-advocacy@yahoogroups.com
>                 Subscribe:     hercules-advocacy-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 Unsubscribe:   hercules-advocacy-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 List owner:    hercules-advocacy-owner@yahoogroups.com

>             Files and archives at:

>                 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-advocacy

>         HERCULES-S370ASM:   Forum discussing use of S/370 assembler with the Hercules emulator

>             Community email addresses:

>                 Post message:  hercules-s370asm@yahoogroups.com
>                 Subscribe:     hercules-s370asm-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 Unsubscribe:   hercules-s370asm-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>                 List owner:    hercules-s370asm-owner@yahoogroups.com

>             Files and archives at:

>                 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-s370asm

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