AS/400 720 first steps

Thanks for all the replies everyone, I'll get around to reading them in a few days I hope. My three-year old son was taken to hospital just after I posted this message, so as you can imagine my priorities have shifted somewhat. Thanks, Camiel On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 3:33 PM, Camiel Vanderhoeven <iamcamiel at gmail.com>wrote: > Hi Everyone, > > I had a blast at a bankruptcy auction today. I was after some networking > gear, which went for more than I was willing to spend on it, but ended up > with an IBM AS/400e 9406-720 for 10 euros (no other bidders). I managed > to > get it home (don't ask me how ;-) > > I'm not sure if it qualifies as a classic, but if it does, I could use > some help from this list... > > The system was running until recently. They then pulled out all the hard > drives and destroyed them, so no left over OS on the machine. The system > came with two breakout cables which end in 12 twinax connectors (1 x 4 + > 1 > x 8), and an external V.34 modem with cable (so I do have a cable to get > from the odd IBM connector to regular RS-232). > > The system did not come with any terminals, so no console. It would > appear > that the console was put on a pallet with a bunch of computer monitors > and > auctioned off as a big lot of monitors. > > The system powers on, and there's a bit of activity on the display. > > So, questions: > > 1) How to connect a console. Would a serial console with a null-modem > cable do any good at all? Or would I need to get a twinax console > terminal? > Any good pointers to find one in western Europe? Preferrably cheap; I > don't > know if I can get the machine going) > > 2) Will ordinary SCSI hard disks work in this system, or do they need to > be specific IBM types? There's 20 disk slots, and 20 disk brackets that > appear to take standard 68-pin SCSI disks. > > 3) Once 1 and 2 are solved, how to get an operating system on there? > > If there's a good "AS/400 from scratch" site or text around, please let > me > know... > > Cheers, > > Camiel >