New Find: AS400

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Wed Feb 2 19:47:05 2005

Ethan wrote:
> So, given that this stuff is c. 1990, what OS am I likely to be

William wrote:
> OS/400, of course. Different, to say the least.
>
> There is talk of Linux, but I think you still need to run OS/400 under
> it (I haven't followed up on it). Frankly, Linux is incredibly boring
> compared with the native operating system.

Linux only runs on the newer RISC-based AS/400s. There were some
people interested in running it on the CISC-based machines, but there
were two main problems:

1) IBM does not document the architecture of the CISC processor. They
    only document ILMI, the virtual machine interface.

2) IBM insiders say that the native CISC architecture is completely
    unsuited for Linux. Reading between the lines, it *might*
    theoretically be possible to run ucLinux (no MMU).

On the RISC-based machines, originally you had to run Linux in parallel
with OS/400, but I think they may have a way to run Linux on just the
bare metal now. I'm not sure; since I don't have a RISC AS/400 (now
known as iSeries?), I haven't been following it.

Eric
Received on Wed Feb 02 2005 - 19:47:05 GMT