19 Apr
2013
19 Apr
'13
10:30 p.m.
On 4/19/2013 1:38 PM, Dave wrote:
I don't know why the 4331 was picked, but
made me think. The system
that was probably better was the 4361 if one could lay hands on one. It
had a storage director built in, and could run 3370's. If one had a
3420 + 2 or 3 3370's and the 4361, it was all about the same height and
form factor and made for a deep freeze and a half to run a very nice VM
system on. VM SP5 ran fine on that system.
It also had 4 3270 builtin ports (or 6, don't recall) plus a port that
had the console crap on the bottom of the screen. The top was a 3215
(maybe??) which had 20 lines rather than 24. You had a special keyboard
with the buttons on one side to bring the power up, and IPL.
Also the 3420 tape drive had the controller built in, so you didn't need
a 3803 type box to run the drive. Basically a reel to reel with the
reels horizontal. The one we had did 6250 as well, so two tapes would
back up the system pretty much.
On 19/04/2013 15:16, geneb wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Apr 2013, Dave wrote:
>
>>> The hard part (at least from my standpoint) is getting your hands
>>> on the IBM mainframe to begin with.
>>
>> MP3000 come up from time to time on E-Bay and are reasonably cheap.
>> Finding an OS to run on one is harder. You can connect a real 3270
>> to Hercules.
>>>
Probably Linux is all one can run unless you have a lot of money to run
Zos. I don't know how long you could legally run the demo Zvm download
or if it runs on the MP3000, I'm guessing the chances are high not.
Yeah. I'm
discovering that finding operating systems for IBM
hardware is problematic. Does Hercules have the OS that was running
on the 4331-K2 circa 1986?
That box could just about run all the IBM 370
operating systems that
were current at that time. I would have thought around 1986 it would
most likely be running DOS/VSE as for example as per:-
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_ca/1/89…
The 4331 was aimed at smaller sites most of who ran DOS. It could also
have been running VM/SP R4 or possibly MVS/SP. MVS/SP is unlikely as
its really overkill for the 4331 and it requires CKD DASD which can be
formatted with a range of sector sizes. The 4331 was usually ordered
with FBA DASD such as these :-
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3310.html
and MVS won't run on these DASD. I think the only freely available OS
that runs on FBA DASD will be from the DOS family. VM/370 and MVS 3.8J
both require CKD disks.
Now THAT is a labor of love. Awesome site. Bookmarked!
g.
That keyboard site is very handy, thanks to the author.
Jim
I
recently saw pictures on the VCF of a 3270 keyboard a guy had (or
was in the process of) hacking to work on a PC.
I have a couple of Nokia 122 key keyboards that plug straight into a
PC. Like the one at the bottom of here:-
http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/scan.htm