Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip

Hi Rob, Many years ago, I looked after an Amdahl 5870 briefly before it was downsized to an IBM 4381. It was rather bigger and I suspect older and slower than what you have. It was a 370 machine - maybe yours is a 390? It was powered by a 400Hz motor-generator set (that was always referred to as "the MG set" and never as a rotary converter) in the next building. A reassuring 400Hz whirr could just be heard from the power supplies in the computer room over the racket of the air conditioners and it was instantly noticable if it stopped, generally just before the shouting started! The 3270 console was built into a desk and as far as I recall had some extra features not normally found on the usual sort of IBM console. I don't remember many details but I think there was a console processor that ran some variant of unix, possibly related to UTS and this could be used to set up performance monitoring screens that could be switched in and out instead of the operator console screen. It was also possible to do things to the i/o channels from the console such as change the mapping between logical and physical channels. I probably won't be much help to you getting your machine set up but I have come across one or two ex-Amdahl guys elsewhere on the net and I may be able to put you in touch if necessary. Regards, Peter.