[rescue] Mainframe on eBay

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:

> Actually, I think they specifically *can't* be peers, so it should
> work fine.  Just make sure to plug into the secondary bus.

Great!  I'll have to find one and try that.

> I've found that the only non-IBM PC chipset the P/390 PCI works in is
> the i450NX.  Pretty rare chipset, on the grand scheme of things.

Yes, but PC Server 500 systems show up for cheap from time-to-time.

> And yes, I believe that the ARTIC is communicated to directly.

That explains a lot.  It makes sense, though; you wouldn't want to
bother the host operating system for channel operations.

> I know next to nothing about AS/400's and their predecessors.  Except
> that they're EBCDIC and use shared-memory processes which is just
> strange enough to warm my heart.

I know very little about them, and unfortunately, my specimen is dead
enough[0] so as only to serve as a TV stand (which is does exceedingly
well, being heavy IBM kit).   I mostly-disassembled it once and never
found anything that I could immediately identify as a processor complex.
It may not even be complete.

Working for the State gave me enough time on MVS to really want to play
with it, but I've never been anywhere that ran OS/400.  Given how
instrumental it was in business data processing 20 years ago, I feel I'm
missing out on something that, while hairy and weird, may be quite
significant.

> What's your boss's name?

Glenn Henry.


[0] Some power-circuitry weirdness keeps it from IPLing.  It might just
     be an open in the internal battery pack.
-- 
Jonathan Patschke   )  "When we are young, wandering the face of the
Elgin, TX          (    earth, wondering what our dreams might be worth,
USA                 )   learning that we're only immortal--for a limited
                    (    time."                              --Neil Peart