IBM z890

[Mike Ross]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 4:03 PM, Connor Krukosky
<connork at connorsdomain.com> wrote:
> I recently won an IBM z890 via auction for $237.

Congratulations! Mainframes are fun!

> It was a very interesting adventure to retrieve this machine since it weighs
> 1500LBS on a good day, and well myself only clocking in around 115LBS I
> needed the help of a few friends and family to get this thing into the
> basement...

So I see. I thought I was mad. Shoehorning that thing under that deck
is about the silliest bit of computer preservation nonsense I've ever
seen! Well done! Exactly the kind of thing I might do :-)

> I plan to pickup an SAN based SCSI box to install Linux and play with. As
> far as I know I can't install any IBM OS' this way, I would need FICON or
> ESCON type storage to boot

One does not boot a mainframe; one IPLs it. :)

> anything like z/OS. (Read EXPENSIVE!)

I can't advise you as to the other boxes. From my Linux experience on
mainframe I can say it doesn't seem to boo... IPL any differently to
any other mainframe OS. If you can define the device to the mainframe
and issue an IPL command, you *should* be able to IPL anything I
think?

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