31 Dec
1999
31 Dec
'99
2:16 a.m.
See embedded comments
On Fri, 31 Dec 1999, Peter Pachla wrote:
Someone was kind enough to handwrite a 16 hexadecimal digit number labeled
"Sys Pw" on the inside of the case. Does that sound the right format for
a system security number? It is not the serial number which like on a
RS/6000 appears on the front panel in a xx-xxxxx format.
Mine also does not want to boot, but I believe that is because I don't
have a console hooked up yet.
I have a twinax terminal for this purpose, which from my browsing of the
AS400 documentation leads me to believe has to be set to "device 0/0". I
did bring a twinax mux like thing that the original console was plugged
into, although I did not have room for the original console terminal in my
car. I had to disassemble the whole machine to get the pedestal unit
light enough to lift into my trunk/back seat.
I took apart what appeared to be the CPU board last night, having to break
the spiffy little AS/400 holograms over some of the screws. The board was
replete with many custom IBM chips none of which I recognized. I
reassembled the CPU board and it refused to boot with exactly the same SRC
codes as it did before, so I assume I did not zap anything.
I did not see anything that resembled RAM anywhere but on the main CPU
board, so I assume mine has the default 8 meg of memory.
I worked at a city hall as an intern in college in the early 90's and
wrote various RPG queries on the AS400. I probably have not touched an
AS400 since.
I developed quite a bad reputation back then among the city hall IT staff
for getting into city databases where I was not allowed. Getting the
commerical building contact names from the fire department database
updated monthly by the firemen sure beat going door to door as I was told
to do, especially during that crappy, rainy summer. Their security
mechanisms seemed to rely on the lack of computer literacy of the city
employees.
As a result I unfairly came to associate AS/400's with lazy sysadmins who
resented getting interrupted during their coffee breaks, which seemed
inordinately frequent.
Thanks, and keep me posted if you have any progress.
Paul
Hi Paul,
By the look of the IBM docs, the >C10 models appear to support more than
one bus, so it could very well be.
The above item fell into my possession today. It
appears to be
circa 1990, contains three hard disks (or DASD, if you prefer),
a 150mb QIC tape drive, and a twinax interface card.
Nice, sounds a lot like my AS/400.
In fact, looking through the AS/400 handbook it would appear that what you
have is an AS/400 9404 Model C10. I THINK this is what I have, mine is a
9404 but I'm not sure if it's a C10, C20 or C30.
I've got the expansion cabinet with mine, which I think makes it a C20 or
30? The IBM web site indicates this machine supports
a whopping 20MB of
RAM and 2GB of hard drive space....
If you haven't already got it I recommend downloading the AS/400 handbook
from the IBM website. It's a 5.15Mb ".pdf" file, but well worth the
download
time!
....It still has an OS on the disks if I can
remember which drive went
in which bay in the machine (or if the id is in the drive rather than
the backplane)
I don't know how drive IDs are assigned, I'm still trying to get mine to
power up.... :-(
BTW You do have the system security number don't you? Without this you'll
have to reinstall the OS every 30 days or so, from what I've been told. From a quick once over the disk/DASD appear to be
SCSI, as does the
QIC tape. Can anyone confirm?
Correct.
If you do manage to get yours working drop me a note, I've been wrestling
with mine for some 4 months and gotten exactly nowhere so far.
TTFN - Pete.
--
Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer.
Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC)
peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk |
peter.pachla(a)wintermute.free-online.co.uk | www.wintermute.free-online.co.uk
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