DEDICATED HOBBYIST ALERT: IBM AS/400 9406-F2 for cheap sale in Germany

[Patrik Schindler]

Hello Tomasz,

allow me to send ahead, that it’s a pleasure to have a conversation going on with you.


Am 06.01.2021 um 03:35 schrieb Tomasz Rola via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>:

>> If you’re new to the platform, I agree. :-)
> To be frank, I am "new" to many things out there.

I’m sorry for being ambiguous. With „If you“, I meant „If somebody“. I should have written like that.

> Always trying to learn. Perhaps this is my real hobby.


I don’t see what’s wrong about that. Keep learning. That’s what my Grandpa said to me when I was a child. :-)

> I think I am truly lousy hobbist.

Don't worry too much. I have a lot of games in my Steam Library „just in case“, and because there once was a huge discount in price. A lot of them, I never installed so far.

Doing something from begin to end requires patience and ongoing motivation. And a certain curiosity level. There are times when I cannot come up with enough of that, and then I feel like what you describe.

> I do not want to find myself under the raised floor.


Depends on the raised floor. I saw one DC in Karlsruhe/Germany where it’s raised one meter. The only drawback is the ongoing storm and chill. ;-)

> Yes indeed, if I had to describe IBM's world in one word, the word would be "different“.

Exactly. But most people struggle to realize that IBM was a first in many things. Since IBM computing is a very nice environment, there wasn’t much exchange in software concepts to common computing as we know it. What we have today, mostly evolved from the home computer area in the 1970’s. And IBM stuff evolved in parallel.

> Even tried to heroically (i.e. without reading manuals) install one of the turnkeys.

This could succeed if you have your favorite one-to-many chat solutions on line and are joined to a group of patient experts. :-)

> I came upon some problems with keyboard mapping


… which is almost always a client problem.

> to have a look into the DEC world

This is still on my list, waiting to be serviced. From my experience, this will happen when I feel bored with the other stuff.

> I have some intro book about mainframes stuffed on my e-book reader, maybe I will try again. Some day.

No need to rush. „The mainframe is dead“ is a meme now decades old. And it’s still there, and relevant. Not that this would be an issue in this list. ;-)

> There is, or was, a very interesting effort to create a modern upgrade to S360, called S380 (and there are, or were, upgraded versions of OS and MVS).

I’m aware. The upgrade involved mostly raising the tight virtual address of 16 MBytes space per region. The driving force was the will to be able to compile GCC. There was a lot of discussion behind the scenes, why on earth something like what is mainly a text parser needs anything more than being in the C89/C90 standard, etc.

Some other people are appalled against this Franken-MVS, because it’s not the true thing.

> It was great idea, because S360 and related software all have fallen into public domain, free to tinker with.

Yap. Although progress is very slow, because there are not too many skilled people trying to move stuff forward. So, kludges are built, as most often in similar situations.

> they regularly hang dogs on IBM for wiping whole sections of old documentation off the redbooks site. Whatever one finds there, be thankful and download.


Yap, I do regularly. Need to provide a proper index, though.

> That was interesting thing to learn. Thanks again.

You’re most welcome. If there arise any questions being AS/400 specific, just ask me and I’ll try to help as best as I can. To me it’s somewhat underrepresented in hobbyist circles.

:wq! PoC