
Blowing the Dust Off of an IBM AS/400 Server - _JamesA_
https://hackaday.com/2019/01/13/blowing-the-dust-off-of-an-ibm-as-400-server/
======
keyle
When I grew up, my mom was working on an AS/400 at work. I spent many hours
watching her fly through all the screens.

She knew exactly the right combo of Function keys followed by how many TAB she
needed to start typing. She could do it without looking at the screen or the
keyboard, just the sheet she had to enter/modify in the system.

It was incredibly fast, 99% of the time.

She hated the move to Windows. All the sudden, everything was slow, error
prone, fiddly. Keyboard navigation was mostly gone and although employees
could start working with less training, she knew the move was generally a big
step backwards.

She despised computers with passion from that day on. Today she's retired and
uses an iPad only.

I'm a UX designer/developer. There is something to be said for these old
terminal systems, when it comes to repetitive daily tasks.

~~~
orthoxerox
I have worked with AS400, and its concept of an input queue is great.
Basically, none of your inputs are ignored if the system is busy, they are
cached by the terminal and sent one by one when the system responds.

To give you an example, imagine hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del, entering your login and
password, hitting Enter, entering FFOX to run Firefox, hitting Enter, hitting
F3 to open a tab, entering news.ycombinator.com, hitting Enter, hitting F3 for
another tab, entering another URL, hitting Enter and it just works. Your
machine can be waiting to show you the login screen, or applying some global
policies, or launching Firefox, but it will never lose your input.

~~~
jakecopp
I do enjoy this aspect about terminals - how you can type a few lines with
enters while a long running process is executing.

However, I wish there was a way to ignore (or cache?) this buffered input if
the process exits with an error or something else of the sort. Does this
exist?

It can quickly get dangerous otherwise!

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NoPicklez
You'd be surprised to think that the IBM AS/400 still keeps the lights on for
a number of large business.

Working in professional services a number of our clients still use AS/400
mainframe environments, with data migrations to other environments becoming
more and more common.

I worked on a data migration from an AS/400 environment to an SQL DB. I kid
you not, the database schema for the AS/400 environment was printed on old A3
scrolls that looked tea stained.

~~~
vyrotek
Yep, I currently work at one and know of another in town. Both companies have
thousands of employees. It will still be a while before we ever get off of it
too. We're taking steps but it has been around for a long time and is pretty
reliable.

~~~
NoPicklez
Exactly, they are quite often a back end system for many major companies.

For simply that reason, they work and rarely have any issues. The problem is
that those with the expertise to manage them and fix them in the event that
things do go wrong are diminishing. And that's a big risk for businesses.

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lettergram
> If you’ve never seen an IBM AS/400 machine, don’t feel bad. Most people
> haven’t. Introduced in 1988 as a mid-range server line, it used a unique
> object-based operating system and was geared specifically towards business
> and enterprise customers. Unless you’re a particularly big fan of COBOL you
> probably won’t have much use for one today, but that doesn’t mean they
> aren’t worth playing around with if the opportunity presents itself

Oh boy, I've seen multiple businesses that utilize AS/400 system(s). I even
know a few people who manage them, building out applications, etc... They are
still very much used.

You'd also be surprised how many records about you still exist in said
system(s). Hell, I was using an AS/400 system only 3 years ago for business
purposes (I'm not a COBOL developer, but something had to be fixed).

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protomyth
Considering we are buying a new iSeries with the Power 9 this year, I expect
to have an AS/400 descendent in our server room for another 10 years. The last
one lasted 13 years.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Don't be assured of that: the failure modes of silicon increase every time you
shrink it due to physics just being a huge problem. That's one of reasons new
stuff doesn't last as long. The new systems will run on nodes with more
problems developers have to fight. I suspect they systems won't last as long.

I appreciate the data point on that one. Sounds like it aged well. Which
CPU('s) did it have?

~~~
protomyth
Well, since IBM generally shows up with replacement parts before I even known
there is a problem, I'm not terribly worried about its length of service.

The current one is an IBM 9406-800 which I do believe is the SStar which is
the RS64 before the POWER 4.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Now that's good service. Far as CPU, I found there are several of them. They
are on a range of 180nm-500nm nodes. Most of the older, long-lasting stuff was
on those nodes. So, that fits. It was also the ones just before merger of
those AS/400 chips and POWER families into POWER4 to become new standard.
Interesting stuff.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RS64](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RS64)

~~~
protomyth
That's pretty much the standard of service with these things. We are going
with an S914 running IBM i 7.3 for the next machine.

Interestingly, the old machine has a tape drive that is not supported on the
new Power 9 boxes (its a non-LTO QIC drive). I guess the good thing is now I
can keep a single stock of LTO-7 tapes. I am a bit odd and have an LTO-7 drive
connected to our FreeBSD server for a "last chance" backup.

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Aloha
AS/400 is the neatest computer system architecturally that I think has ever
been made.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_i](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_i)

~~~
Something1234
What in particular do you find really cool? I think the binary translator is
really cool, I want to find more details about it.

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rramadass
What about the 2200/MCP etc. from Unisys? Does anybody here have experience
with them and can shed some light on it?

~~~
EvanAnderson
I have passing familiarity. A former client used an MCP-based system (first an
A Series, then later a Clearpath system on PC hardware) to run their line-of-
business system (a small bank). A friend of mine worked for Unisys right out
of college in the early 70's writing ALGOL code for the MCP. She says that it
has its roots in the old Burroughs B5000. From what I've read they are odd
beasts, and have some really interesting hardware-level security architecture.
I never got to play with the system, aside from typing a couple of commands
now-and-again into the OS "shell" (called MARC-- Menu Assisted something-or-
other), and a little bit of editing in the editor CANDE.

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hsnewman
Used those in the 80's - 90's, great machines! The most reliable and well
secured systems I've been on.

~~~
_JamesA_
It's the invisible machine. They are all still running core systems in a lot
of companies.

~~~
crb002
Far from invisible in the Des Moines market. Mainframe is still king of CA
systems in the CAP model.

~~~
Domark
Des Moines is roughly the size of Bloomington, MN.

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setquk
Nice to see AS/400 turning up on here.

When I started my first proper "IT" job, back in the late 90s for a big
multinational, they were running their payroll system off it. The main node
was about a decade old at the time.

The input system for it was a 16 bit VB4 desktop app that wrote text files to
a netware share that this picked up.

I am always impressed at how these bits of old tech, sticky tape and string
were so unbelievably reliable and scalable across thousands of users. I
actually actively miss working on this sort of stuff.

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zyberzero
We're running our ERP on an AS/400\. That is nowhere near to die in the
foreseeable future.

I was actually trying to learn RPG mentioned in the article last week, a blast
from the past!

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Yeah, it seems like the author isn't aware of how common AS/400s still are in
business environments. Thankfully, I have so far managed to dodge having to
learn how to use it by suggesting that the other members of my team continue
to be the point people for it.

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senectus1
ha! I used to look after an AS/400 running the company ERP (JD Edwards).

Pretty solid box. never ever _ever_ crashed or got slow or anything. just a
mind fuck to do anything with.

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karatefylla
I'm literally staring into the "black hole" of an AS/400 right now on my
second screen.

~~~
ryanmercer
I have 4 BlueZone Mainframe Display windows open right now connected to AS400
servers. I do every single day at work :).

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tapland
Ran the Hercules emulator with a z/OS image last year. It was a fun project
and the UI is super-fast.

Currently working on another mainframe os but wish that I can some day find a
place with an i-series or z-box (IBM mainframes).

Only in my 20s, but these systems will be around until I retire. The hardware
might change, but the cost of educating developers in RPG, COBOL, control
languages etc must be far lower than translating the code.

~~~
unixhero
In my halcyon enthusiast-learning days I tried to approach Mainframes and the
IBM world to learn anything I could about the different platforms,
architectures - basically getting into it. IBM's arrogance kept me at an arms
length, and I kind of hold a grudge towards them to this day. What in the
world did they gain from taking the stance of being enthusiast-unfriendly? For
instance they refused to sell me a fast-synch monitor for my RS/6000
workstation purchased from a defunct company. And so on... Good thing that
Linux steamrolled most of its Unix/AIX dominance. Like a sweet revenge served
cold.

To be fair, one day a few years ago I did get access to my clients' mainframe
last year. A Z-something big-iron running on of the frames on AIX which I had
shell access to. It was a "whoa man, I'm in. I got access to the
mainframe!"-moment. My favourite tools were installed by someone else, so it
was quite enjoyable; midnight commander, zshell and bourne again shell were
present :).

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jerry40
I used DB2 hosted on AS/400 at my previous job 4 years ago. I'm sure it is
still in use. (the application is quite important for that company)

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ryanmercer
Heh. I work with AS400, and BlueZone Mainframe Display, every day at work for
nearly 13 years now. Hundreds of us do, we do the bulk of our work in it
actually.

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crb002
Is there a web framework geared to AS/400 UX that has client side keyboard
caching?

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kristoferobin
still have bunch of those at work(large bank)

~~~
karatefylla
Same here. Large insurance company.

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stesch
PWRDWNSYS *IMMED

