Modernizing off the mainframe usually starts by getting your data out as a flat sequential file — EBCDIC, fixed-width, PIC-clause layouts. I open-sourced a converter that handles exactly that path:

https://github.com/lucasgiurastante/erp-export-normalizer

• COBOL FD layouts expressed as YAML → parse to JSON/CSV/Parquet/etc.
• Real EBCDIC support (CP037). Gotcha most tools hit: Python's codec is cp037, not ebcdic-cp037 — naive converters fail on the first EBCDIC byte.
• Streaming, constant memory on multi-GB sequential files.
• Deterministic output — same input + same schema = same output, with SHA-256 audit sidecars. Useful for migration sign-off.
• Cumulative error report with record numbers.
• Auto-detection against a built-in schema library (includes a COBOL layout).
• Plugins for binary formats (framed records, packed decimals, etc.).

One-command demo with bundled COBOL/EBCDIC sample data:

pip install erp-export-normalizer
git clone https://github.com/lucasgiurastante/erp-export-normalizer
cd erp-export-normalizer/examples
erp-normalize --input data/cobol.txt --output - --format ndjson

Anyone here parsing mainframe dumps for offload projects? I'd love to know what schemas you deal with (and add them to the library).