[rescue] RE: [SunRescue] OT: AS/400 stuff

[James Lockwood]

On Wed, 6 Jun 2001, Brian Hechinger wrote:

> are these things still $20k?  i would really like to get one.  although, looking
> at IBMs site you can buy refurb mainframes for >$10K but you still have the
> power issue.  they take more than i have to give. :)

If you really want a 'frame at home...

The cheapest way is the 1985 XT and AT/370 which runs single user CMS.
You can run PL/I and the VS-Assembler on it.

The next step up is the FSI OPEN/370.  It runs all S/370 mode software
including MVS/370, JES2, VTAM and all the S/370 compilers.  It's a small
4381.  Info at http://www.funsoft.com.  Modern VLSI CMOS hardware, 3.5 PC
disks.

You could also get a 9370 or rack mounted ES/9000s.  Some of those are
being given away, especially the under 5 MIPS systems but realisticly it
would take a few thousand dollars to get one.  4000 series systems are
true give-aways but they're so big and the DASD is huge.

You might also keep your eyes open for either a IBM 7437 box (about
the size of a IBM PS/2-model 80), which is a S/370 in a box that
attaches to a PS/2.  They run about 750 kips (very rough estimate).

Another possibility is an IBM P/370 card, which was the precursor to the
P/390.  The P/370 implements the S/370 on a card which plugs into a PS/2.
They run about 3.5-4 MIPs (Again, a very rough estimate).

You can run VM/ESA-370 Feature on either of these (but can't run
VM/ESA since these are only S/370 systems).

The XT/370 is not a full S/370 implementation (non-priviledged
instructions only), and requires a special VM/PC operating system.
Additionally, it's even slower at about 50 KIPs.  I still have an AT/370
kicking around but not the software to drive it (it differs from the
XT/370 s/w).  There are also a bunch of other bizarre limits in it (32MB
max size of minidisk images, etc).

$20k for a P/390 is a deal, they were $50k from IBM not that long ago.
There's an amazing amount of engineering packed into that card.

-James