Selling an old IBM AS400/9404

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Mon Jan 6 21:08:00 2003

John Mark wrote:
> I'm selling an '89 IBM AS400/9404 and I'm trying to find out the
> appropriate price. Here are the specs. Anyone able to help me out?

Sellam Ismail wrote:
> I guess it might have value on the secondary market, but as a
> collectible: $0-10.

In my experience, they have even *less* value on the secondary market;
you may even have to pay to have the larger (9406) models scrapped.
The problem is that the software licenses for the older CISC-based
models are non-transferrable, and the cost of buying a new OS/400
license is substantial. (I'm not sure IBM will even sell OS/400 for
CISC any more.)

Even if you don't care about having a legitimate OS/400 license, if
you leave the machine powered off for too long, the service processor
will demand a password on startup, which you have to obtain from IBM.
And if you don't have a license, IBM won't give you a password.

If you want to do a fresh install of software onto a CISC-based AS/400,
you need a MULIC tape (Machine Unique Licensed Internal Code) for the
specific hardware model. If you don't get the right MULIC tape with the
machine, it is very hard to find one, and they are very expensive to buy
from IBM.

The software licenses for the newer PowerPC (RISC) based AS/400 and
iSeries machines are transferrable.
Received on Mon Jan 06 2003 - 21:08:00 GMT