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

[Joshua D. Boyd]

--
Joshua Boyd

On Wed, 6 Jun 2001, James Lockwood wrote:

> 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
> 
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