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

[mazzinia at tin.it]

There are people that tried, it doesn't work. There's something proprietary written at low level that gets erased doing  a low level format ( required to change the sectors ). The specifics were never released... 
With this I mean that the trick is not the firmware of the disk, but low level bits on the platters 

About the automatic shutdowns/restarts , I agree but I think it's a feature that was mainly directed at smaller AS used in satellite offices to support the local workforce and that had nothing going on, as a consequence, outside of business hours

-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> On Behalf Of Patrik Schindler via cctalk
Sent: Wednesday, January 6, 2021 2:22 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: DEDICATED HOBBYIST ALERT: IBM AS/400 9406-F2 for cheap sale in Germany

Hello,

Am 06.01.2021 um 13:37 schrieb mazzinia at tin.it:

>> What I understood from your last posting is that once you reformat an AS/400 disk for 512 Bytes per sector as used by commodity hardware, you can’t use it again on AS/400, even by reformatting.
> 
> Yes, that's correct

Hm, I never verified that claim. Maybe I once had such an ex-AS/400 disk in earlier times which might sit unrecognized in my hard disk drawer. I can’t confirm your claim but I doubt it’s true: Firmware extensions will not get overridden from a reformat, and you can always reformat with 522 Bytes/Sector. I bet it will work again.

> And I doubt that there's an orderly shutdown from the panel…

That’s exactly what I wanted to express. :-)

> I remember being told of only one procedure, but it would not cause damages/issues of sort.

I’ve read about that procedure in an IBM (red)book and it’s „not recommended for regular use“. I would need to look up the source if you want a proof.

> In any case we're speaking about something that was meant to be turned on and never turned off unless some maintenance or a big issue.

The OS has highly sophisticated scheduling for automatic start and shutdown, with possible exceptions per weekday and one-time exceptions like holidays. (Type GO POWER into the command line to see the menu.) I guess even one or two decades back, there was reason to save power.

> and for a catastrophe where the terminal is not accessible

That’s what I mean. The procedure is not meant to be used as a substitute for pwrdwnsys.

:wq! PoC