13 Dec
2006
13 Dec
'06
6:56 p.m.
Richard wrote:
Does anyone have experience with one of these puppies?
There's one
for dirt cheap on ebay right now, item 170059136469.
Its Big. Its Blue. Its Heavy.
Its IBM!
It looks like an excellent specimen. It's on the wrong coast, and too
large for my collection.
the big problem with IBM communications gear like this is that it only
runs with IBM licensed
software. The public domain versions of MVS an VM won't support it, and
Linux on the
mainframe does not either.
Also it probably is attached via channels, as evidenced by the cable
block on the lower
picture, which makes it a bit of a white elephant in todays data
centers, which have moved
to ESCON for the most part.
At one time, I think the 3705, a predecessor was a modified 370
processor with a very
nice front panel. This one lacks that to make it pretty, and probably
makes it a bit safer
from scrappers who hack out such things and sell them
alone.
Jim