Nekochan Net

A local college student association is looking at getting an AS/400e; someone a hundred miles away offered them one for free. However, the thing is very large; about 3.5 feet by 2.5 feet by 2 feet. We do not know how heavy it as, and are trying to figure out if we can move it. The people offering it to us think that it is 1000 pounds, but this seems a bit heavy to me.

To make maters more confusing, they do not know what the specs on it are; it has a bunch of hard drives (about 15) and maybe 4 processors. As such, we don't know if it is worth the time and effort to move the thing, power it (it takes 250 volts), and have someone set up the software. We need to figure out what its weight and specs are in order to decide if we want the thing.

The type number is 9406-720. Does anyone have any ideas here? I checked the IBM webpage and did not have much luck. Thanks!

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-WolvesOfTheNight

My first bank job in London about 9 years ago had me working with an AS/400 box writing fraud pattern analysis software. IIRC, it was about 2ft wide, 4 ft tall and about 3 ft deep, excluding the external tape drives and other accessories - It was big and DAMN it was heavy. My fully loaded Sun E250 weighs over 170 lbs, and that is just a deskside system. I wouldn't be surpised if your proposed system weighs 600 to 1000 lbs. Lifting machinery is probably a good idea. Remove drives and PSUs first and pack securely for transport if possible to prevent vibration damage.

If the system's been wiped or the software is corrupted, getting install tapes for OS/400 may prove to be a bit of a challenge without going for an IBM maintenance program (serious $$$).

You might want to check out the iSeries domain at RedBooks to see if there is any relevant info there and most definitely the older IBM Boulder Docs site.

I'd be interested to know what you use it for if you do decide to take it on. GO VERB and GO SUBJECT

I believe that Walnut, who occasionally posts here, has one or had one of these. They do look very kewl. You might try giving him an e-mail.

I had an AS400 until i reached a point where I had it!
If you don't have the licensing that comes with it, good luck in getting it up and running. Anyway, it made nice furniture (it was the main reason I bought it), very cool looking.
The real story is that i needed a few bucks to buy more SGI stuff, so I sold it.
Here are a couple of pics:

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Me

Is it my imagination, or is there something "Cylon-ish" about the front view of that box?

How about these for Cylonish.
These are the big brothers to my deskside Onyx2.

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Me

I dunno. Even though they are bigger and meaner, the old SGI boxes are somehow not so malevolent as the AS400.

dito

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Me

Yours looks a lot like the one we were looking at, though it had more red on it. It seems that furniture is about all they are worth since they take so much trouble to move, set up, and run. It is somehow sad to see what were really cool computers being replaced by evil inside dell x86 boxes. It just seems that there is not much variety left in the computer market.

I will have to check what they decided, but I think that they ended up saying that without more information on its specs they would not pay to have it shipped 150 miles to them.

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-WolvesOfTheNight

AS400 is a business machine. they are a horror to maintain. i would pass it by.

Totally true. I got one when the company I was working for upgraded. It was a pain in the ass since day one. It didn't last long, I found someone to dump it on

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-ks



See them all >here<

I own an RS/6000 workstation that stays shut down most of the time, mostly because I don't have any customers running it anymore, and partly because, though I can get around in it fine, it's a lot like using assembly to control an OS.

Hmmmm...our AS/400 sysop at my former job did quite well then...load'sa financial software updates went without a glitch, and the machine had an uptime of 3 years before they stop/started it as a precaution for the switch from 1999 to 2000.
At that point he was more worried about sticking harddisk-heads than the OS

Only funny thing i remember was that although it really was rock-solid, i was brought to it's knees one time because of some funky interface-software on someone's PDA which made the database drop core (non-approved stuff ofcourse)

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-= I reject reality, and substitute my own =-

1 Indigo R3k-33 32MB XS24-Z;
1 Indy R5k-180 256MB XZ;
1 Indy R4k-175 64MB XL;
2 Indigo2 R10k-195 512MB MaxImpact;
2 Indigo2 R4k-200 256MB (XL+Extreme);
2 Octane Dual R12K-300 1024MB (MXI+V6).

RS/6000 is a whole different world. It's a weird UNIX machine, but it's still UNIX, and the typical flexible, easy UNIX licensing rules apply.

AS/400 is more like the mainframe's little brother. It's fantastically expensive to get even a single-user license. Each and every bit of functionality is a layered product. There are no considerations for hobbyists, even on ancient 0.5 MIPS machines, because they're afraid you might secretly use it for OTP or terminal control.

The RS/6000 is quite simply the workstation "class" i5. It is used in a variety of capacities ranging from i5/0S (aka OS/400), AIX 5L, Linux and Windows development to CAD/CAM. It is, in fact, an integral part of the product line that is "i5" (aka AS/400). Three banks and a little company called Intuit that I have done IT work for have used the RS/6000 as development/testbed platforms for their i5 software. Calling it "a whole different world" is a far cry from the truth. They are designed and marketed to complement each other.

You have an amazing way of choosing to preach on a vast array of topics that I doubt you have much experience at all with (based upon prior rants of yours) to an audience that has actually *used* the topics of your rants in more than a "hobbiest" capacity.

Perhaps you would be better served by finding those that have little to no real-world experience with the platforms you nievely comment on, before dispelling such inaccuracies.