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He dropped over $23,000 on a mainframe just to "play with and learn how it works"? Finally he can run a personal Minecraft server.
1700 watts, all the time. Yikes.
The z800/z890 are probably optimal for hobby use even though they are old because they have modest power requirements and are relatively light and not too wide like the z114 which is absolutely massive.
Actually a P/390 (MCA or PCI card), or Multiprise 3000 (deskside hybrid CMOS/PC server thing) would be even easier but those are very very old 31-bit systems at this point. (I also have a R/390 setup and can comment on that if desired)
Now that said, this requires A LOT of dedication to get right. You need to understand at minimum shipping/transport issues, as well as electrical requirements and installation (or be willing to consult someone that can advise you on phase and conversion if necessary).
After that, you definitely need an HMC (a PC used to do things like load the OS) or at least a recovery disk and a lot of patience to set that up in emulation or on other hardware.
And then, you need a FICON (or older ESCON) capable array. Connor Krukosky goes into detail about what it's like without that, and you are extremely limited (basically Linux) in what you can do without FICON. A ds6800 is the easiest way to do that because it is a small rackmount unit, but they are also in demand for that reason. DS8ks are quite cheap all things considered, but serious iron like the frame itself.
And then finally you need some OS media which is also non-trivial to get (although there is or was some "out there" on file sharing).
I am willing to help anyone interested in this kind of thing for fun and preservation of incredible technology and history.
https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/my-raspberry-pi-thinks...
Once you have the basic emulator setup working, check out the Turnkey system below. It's MVS 3.8 so not current Z/OS. If you google around for z/os ADCD, you might find an actual Z/OS CD to try next.
Is it just for the fun or is there actually a legit use case for having a mainframe at home apart from accelerating climate change?
I'm not even sure if there are still use cases where companies use main frames for newly developed systems. Even core banking systems can be build without using a main frame.
It was a great read though and I'd probably buy one as well if I had the money, time, and space. They seem like underrated machines.
Is it just for the fun or is there actually a legit use case for having a mainframe at home apart from accelerating climate change?
Fun and learning. I doubt there’s a legit use-case for a mainframe even in business environments. All the “reliability” it gives you can be re-implemented on commodity hardware and still come out ahead compared to the costs of buying & maintaining a mainframe.
On th plus side, we’ve basically moved complexity from hardware to software (it was pioneered by Google, a software company, so no wonder) which increases salaries of software people, at the expense of hardware people. So yay for us I guess.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not even sure if there are still use cases where companies use main frames for newly developed systems. Even core banking systems can be build without using a main frame.
If you Google around a bit, mainframes are pretty expensive, but have very high up times and other benefits.