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Inside an IBM AS/400 eSeries Factory [video]

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Re: Inside an IBM AS/400 eSeries Factory [video]

#11

Post by bluepizza »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #9

These machines were amazing. Rock solid. Never crashed, never need someone to reboot it and if something went wrong it would call IBM and say it needed service and what components were impacted (if it knew). In some companies these things were in a closet, under piles of other things and everyone had forgotten about its existence. Then comes the IBM rep to fix it and there is confusion about its existence. The operat…

They are so slow, though. DB2 and API performances are atrocious. This is a machine designed to run batch jobs, and nothing else.

Re: Inside an IBM AS/400 eSeries Factory [video]

#12

Post by unixhero »

nikau wrote: post #5
1MachineElf wrote: post #3

I wonder if this is how Oxide Computer is building their systems in 2022.

Interesting to read some of the hype around 0xide, it seems like its just some software ontop of a blade system?

No dude. They are reimagining the firmware and ROMs on the mother board, and so on. I recommend looking further into it.

Re: Inside an IBM AS/400 eSeries Factory [video]

#13

Post by nikau »

unixhero wrote: post #12
nikau wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to read some of the hype around 0xide, it seems like its just some software ontop of a blade system?

No dude. They are reimagining the firmware and ROMs on the mother board, and so on. I recommend looking further into it.

I did have a read of their website, but it reads a bit like a kickstarter campaign with lots of vague statements and no details.

At this stage I'm unsure what benefits it has over a blade server managed by traditional api like snmp.

Re: Inside an IBM AS/400 eSeries Factory [video]

#14

Post by soneil »

nikau wrote: post #5
1MachineElf wrote: post #3

I wonder if this is how Oxide Computer is building their systems in 2022.

Interesting to read some of the hype around 0xide, it seems like its just some software ontop of a blade system?

From listening to their podcasts / twitter spaces it sounds like they're building machines from the ground up. I get the impression they'd hate the analogy, but an apple style take on owning the hardware and software together.

For a dip into how deep in the weeds they are, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCkuCkp3Zoo (they also do this as "oxide and friends" wherever you find podcasts, which is a nuisance to link to but works better)

Re: Inside an IBM AS/400 eSeries Factory [video]

#15

Post by jdougan »

doctor_eval wrote: post #10
GnarfGnarf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gasp! You poor soul :o) RPG (Report Program Generator) is the worst programming language on the face of the Earth. Its paradigm is the IBM 402 tabulator.

Thank you for clearing up my cognitive dissonance. I mean, how many people had jobs programming RPGs? How many people possibly played role playing games on AS/400?

Clearly, someone need to build/port an RP game builder (EasyRPG?) to AS/400 RPG.

Re: Inside an IBM AS/400 eSeries Factory [video]

#16

Post by sedatk »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #9

These machines were amazing. Rock solid. Never crashed, never need someone to reboot it and if something went wrong it would call IBM and say it needed service and what components were impacted (if it knew). In some companies these things were in a closet, under piles of other things and everyone had forgotten about its existence. Then comes the IBM rep to fix it and there is confusion about its existence. The operat…

I worked at a company for 3 months in 1998 and the AS/400 there crashed once. It required IBM personnel to come and fix it. So, I like the narrow scope of the machine and certain concepts in the OS, but “rock solid” might as well be an urban legend.

Re: Inside an IBM AS/400 eSeries Factory [video]

#18

Post by nkg »

This thing is still operating the ERP of many brick and mortar french businesses. A few software companies have the guys able to maintain it, so they are well off, charging big bucks for every maintenance operation. As a developer I have been asked a few times to build websites that feed on flat files exported from AS400 (don't bother asking about APIs). It was a pain every single time.

Re: Inside an IBM AS/400 eSeries Factory [video]

#20

Post by protomyth »

sedatk wrote: post #16
ThinkBeat wrote: post #9

These machines were amazing. Rock solid. Never crashed, never need someone to reboot it and if something went wrong it would call IBM and say it needed service and what components were impacted (if it knew). In some companies these things were in a closet, under piles of other things and everyone had forgotten about its existence. Then comes the IBM rep to fix it and there is confusion about its existence. The operat…

I worked at a company for 3 months in 1998 and the AS/400 there crashed once. It required IBM personnel to come and fix it. So, I like the narrow scope of the machine and certain concepts in the OS, but “rock solid” might as well be an urban legend.

We've has one and its successors (iSeries) since the 90's and we have never had a crash of any sort. We've had hardware failures, but the IBM rep fixes those and the machine never crashed because of any of them. The damn thing is rock solid and we bought a new one (Power9) last year.
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