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