Any AS/400 experts around?

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Wed Jun 21 01:01:53 2000

I'm now the proud (?) owner of an old AS/400, Type 9406 Model B45.
Assuming that when we managed to let the rack fall on its side that we
didn't destroy it; this is yet to be determined. Anyhow, I have very
little (bordering on no) clue about AS/400s, so if anyone else knows
about them, tips, advice, help, or the like would be greatly
appreciated.

The system came with about twelve Type 9332-600 disk drives (600M each),
a Type 9348-001 nine-track drive (which is an HP 88780 with a custom
front panel), and two terminals (but only one keyboard). It appears
that the disks and tape drive are differential SCSI devices with
Sun-style 50-pin D-sub connectors. I vaugely recall reading in the past
that AS/400s use a weird sector size that is not a power of two; most
high-end SCSI drives can be reformatted for alternate sector sizes.

The CPU box contains:

        part feature upper lower
slot number number connector connector function
---- ------- ------- --------- --------- ----------
  1 66X4709 3060 16M memory
  2 66X4709 3060 16M memory
  3 66X4490 3055 8M memory
  4 21F5132 2513 processor? tamper seals!
  5 93X2120 2514 ???
  6 93X2701 2601 50 female tape interface
  7 93X2709 6110 50 female disk interface
  8 46F4141 6130 ???
  9 26F5028 6031 50 male 50 male ???
 10 59X4270 6040 25 female ???
 11 93X2737 6110 50 female second disk interface?
 12 blank panel
 13 blank panel

I guess that one of the cards in slot 9 or 10 must be an interface to
terminals or to a 3174 terminal controller or the like.

The IBM AS/400 web site doesn't seem to have any info on hardware this
old.

I'd really like to get an ethernet interface.

I got factory-sealed 9-track tape distributions of two different releases
of OS/400, four tapes each. I gather that there's some sort of license
key needed for the software, so I have no idea whether I'll be able to
install it. Naturally when I got the machine the seller didn't make any
arrangements for a license transfer. For the price I paid I suppose it
would be unreasonable to ask them to jump through hoops to do such a
thing.
Received on Wed Jun 21 2000 - 01:01:53 BST