Re: First-timer buying AS/400 and have questions

A side note about power. AS/400s ship with an internal battery to allow
them to make a soft landing when the power goes out. It is just enough
battery to do the equivalent of a laptop going into a deep sleep
(writes memory to disk for the next boot). You will want to check if
the 170 has a battery, which you will probably need to replace it
unless the person selling you the 170 already has.

For V5R2 there is an IBM manual for calculating the minimum number of
disk arms needed for any configuration. You can get it at this URL
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/perfmgmt/pdf/V5R2FiSArmct.pdf.
I have an Excel spread*** I built from the manual, which I can email
you.

The AS/400 has supported mirroring for a long time. I've never seen
one set up, so I can't recall if you have to buy a licensed program to
support it or not.

PTFs can be obtained via the Internet or this crappy 9,600baud
synchronous modem IBM ships with the AS/400. The modem connects to IBM
only. I use the Internet to get PTFs and FTP them to the AS/400. They
download as CD images. You have to create a virtual optical device for
the FTPs, so the AS/400 can read the images. It's a bit like reaching
in your ear to scratch your nose, but it works.

WebSphere Development Studio is very pricey, even at the P05 tier.

Be aware the RPG and C were retroactively named as part of WebSphere a
few releases ago. This drove me nuts one release when I could not find
the manuals, until I looked under WebSphere. You do NOT need WebSphere
Development Studio to use RPG or C.

Blue smoke (aka avoid turning your AS/400 into Puff the Magic Dragon).

At ~18 GB I would quit worrying about space for the load source and
licensed programs.

A few more words on Single Level Store:

The AS/400 (then project Silverlake) was built upon the System/38
architecture. Some folks used to joke the OS/400 was really Control
Program Five (CPF) version 8. You will notice all the system messages
still start CPFhhhh. The AS/400 was envisioned to eventually not have
disk drives. IBM was thinking bubble memory or some form of solid-state
memory would replace disks by the time the architecture went to market
(This was 1978 thinking, by a bunch of Star Trek fans. When you see
memory pool *BASE, pronounce it Star Base-and you will start getting
their sense of humor.) Consequently, disk access was added as an
external layer of sorts. Some people will say the AS/400 does not know
it even has disk drives. The single level store is described as a giant
two-dimensional plane of addresses. The fact that the contents of an
address is on disk or in memory is a trick of the hardware. The CPU
does not really care. It is the job of the I/O Processors and I/O
Adapters (IOPs and IOAs) to move the contents of an address in and out
of main storage (kinda). The part that makes this a little complicated
is the AS/400 does use the concept of a HEAP. Every job has a HEAP
which moves in and out of unprotected storage. Unprotected storage is
the closest concept to a swap file. Before ten people write in and say
this is not a swap file, it isn't. It's just the closest hole to
the pigeon. It is on disk. The amount of unprotected storage is not
something that most people worry about (unless they are running out of
disk). You will not be concerned with configuring any of this, so the
simple answer is not to worry about a swap file. There is a swap-like
job setting called purge YES/NO. This setting controls if a job is
completely purged to disk or partially purged to disk when the system
starts running out of memory. Purge NO means partial. Most people set
the default to PURGE *NO. If OS/400 starts struggling for memory, it
will make a dynamic decision to automatically flip over to PURGE *YES
until the memory crisis is over. OS/400 has lots of features like this.
For example, if the system is having a CPU crisis-it changes all time
slices to 500ms. Getting back to the HEAP, IBM allocates DSA in the
HEAP and does other types of things with it you will be more familiar
with.

At the time of the CISC to RISK conversion, I was working for a company
that got new AS/400s before they were released-so my dates are a bit
premature to the GA (General Availability) dates. We had RISK boxes in
'93. I remember having an argument with Al Barsa over the phone about
my old company's support of RISK in '94. He might have had a pre-GA
box as well.

When you run any of the SAVxxx commands and specify the output to a
Save File (*SAVF or the .savf extension), you have a binary object that
can be handled by a PC. Just FTP as BINARY, as has already been
suggested. Also be aware that OS/400 has some FTP extensions you will
need to use. Running FTP from the AS/400 you use NAMEFMT 0 to mean the
old QSYS naming and NAMEFMT 1 to mean PC-like naming. From an FTP
client connected to an AS/400 the equivalent commands are QUOTE SITE
NAMEFMT 0 and QUOTE SITE NAMEFMT 1. When you want to transfer a Save
File, you use NAMEFMT 1 and GET/PUT your MySavedStuff.savf.

I am very glad to hear that I am not the oldest fart in this thread.
Dear, Ken Pate-what were dinosaur rides like? Okay, okay-I started
on the System 3 with 4.9 megabyte removable disk packs and 96 column
cards. I also worked on a 1401. I preferred bronto rides.

I love to sneak up on groups of old timers at user group meetings, when
their conversation goes like:

Old Timer # 1) I remember when we got our first PC!
Old Timer # 2) PC? I remember when we got our first CRT!
Old Timer # 3) CRT? I remember when we got rid of the damned punched
paper tape and started using punch cards!
Me) Punched paper tape? We used to dream about punched paper tape. We
use to have to tap the ends of 2 wires together-in the correct
sequence-and walk 20 miles through the snow to get to the other end
of the wires!

.

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