IBM P/390

The R/390 microchannel version of the card did work on 4.3.3. Had such a beast as work machine 10 years ago. Wish they let me buy the silly thing... But of course it had to go through 3rd party asset disposal to a company didn't resell to the public. And that meant it was deemed too old to commercially market so it was broken up for parts. Corporate policies are wonderful things. -- Colin Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: On 05/17/2012 05:19 AM, jim s wrote: The microcode involved is actually the microcode for the S/390 processor on the board. That comes from a "LIC" (Licensed Internal Code) file. That file is tough to get (but one need only ask), is different between the three types of P/390 card, but it is the same whether the card is hosted under AIX or OS/2. The rest of the software is simply a set of drivers and a few utilities. It's quite easy to install. The drivers provide for the emulation of I/O hardware to access mass storage and network devices. DASD is emulated by container files on the host system. Upon initialization, this software loads the LIC data into the card, then it's capable of booting whatever mainframe OS you want to run on it. I've run OS/390 v2r9 and v2r10, and VM/ESA v2.3 on mine. As Sridhar mentioned, the software doesn't want to install on later releases of AIX. Something later than 4.3.3 MIGHT work, but 5.1 does not. These cards hosted under AIX are quite nice. The later P390/E cards with 1GB of RAM onboard are as scarce as hens' teeth. I'd love to get my hands on one. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA