So I've finally got it...

I know this is OT by a couple years, but I hope you all don't mind too much ; ) After a few weeks of calling people, renting a uhaul, building a ramp, pinning myself in a closet for a while, and nearly causing much damage to my apartment, I now have what has been a dream/goal in my life: There's a Mainframe sitting in my living room. Not just any mainframe, but a nice black S/390 G3 (9672-RC4). It's got a 1996 list price that rivals the prices of houses in SoCal, and it's managed to depreciate to about 0.2% of its list price in around 7 years. And, with 2GB ram, it's got more memory on its processor than I do in my fairly fast/ capable (very OT) PC... Of course, it's configured for 3phase 200-480VAC (well, that's what it's marked on the power supplies... I'm fairly suprised that they can have that much variance)... but I've managed to get it to spin its fans and power its "Support Element" laptop with single-phase 240VAC - using the old "tie together two of the input phases to one leg of the power line" trick. I've still got to fix how the wiring job is on that is done... currently a ball of electrical tape, I'd like to stick the proper plugs back on it and get some proper outlets (which hopefully will be less than $50 apiece); that'll also let me power both the front AND back power supplies on the sucker. So, I've got the laptop booting, and the fans spinning on the S/390, but none of the boards are powered up yet.. and it's asking for a username/ password to log into the "SE" application it has, which I'm willing to bet is what will let me power up and IPL (boot) my new toy. Of course, it doesn't have DASD (disks)... something will need to be worked on for that, but it can probably come later... I'm hoping on using 'a UNIX look-alike' on it for now, and am hoping I'll be able to get the kernel booted without using DASD to boot it from. I'd have to install it from somewhere, anyway, right? Well, If anyone knows info to help me get into the SE or HMC, drop me a line, I'd be interested in learning : ). For now, I'm trying to contact the people I got it from for the info, but I'm not anticipating much luck on that front. For the rest of you, I've got some eye candy that's where I plan to put information about this thing once I get farther along with it.. http://computer-refuge.org/s390/ Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCS Information Technology at Purdue Research Computing and Storage http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/