S/36

Scott -- Normally I jump on anything S/36 on the list, but life's kept me busy enough to distract me. I collect S/36 equipment, and I have most of the manuals, some of them scanned. Consider me a resource. A couple of answers to your questions: Q: Is this like the AS/400, where if it doesn't come with an OS and firmware disk it's toast? A: No, thankfully. So long as you get the media, you're alright. There's even a way to hack around security if it's absolutely necessary. Q: What sort of drives does it take? A: As far as I know (and I haven't really explored the topic) it takes model specific drives. The file system seems proprietary to the hardware. Sellam may know different. I defer to the great one on this. Q: Is it 220v only? A: That depends on the country of origin and the model. There were four main series: 5360 - 220v only as it was a datacenter class system, 5362 - this was the deskside type with a country default power requirement 220v/110v, 5363 - another deskside but later and switchable if memory serves, and the 5364 - this one may also have been switchable, it's a desktop unit... mine's in storage or I'd check for you. Q: Any other weirdness? A: Gee... um where to begin. The system's totally unlike VMS/Unix/PDP OSs. I suppose the weirdness depends on your perspective. The basis of comparison is the AS400 since that's what superceded it. AS400 added a relational database system and more systems' management. But the underlying operating systems are rather similar. On the other hand, the hardware's totally different. S/36 (and this is distinct from AS/36) is a 16bit operating system with dual CPUs, one dedicated IO/Memory management. It's a flat address space. The system was targeted as a total office solution, and indeed it offered a very modern set of capabilities. The original strategy of office networking was based on PCs talking to a S/36. Files could be shared, there was e-mail, word processing, and a database/development analogous of non-relational MS-Access. You could pretty rapidly create tables and then build forms around them. It had it's own development language RPG, which was analagous to a VBA as it was really built to further enable the database application development. It originated as a reporting language on earlier IBM systems. Other languages were supported, Basic and Cobol come to mind. Sorry, no C. The whole thing's rather interesting when you're used to the file system based world and open systems. IMHOP its well worth playing around with if you have the wherewithal to do so. If you're into hacking it may be disappointing as it's a very closed and proprietary solution base. But if you get off on clever technology design, the rapid deploy piece of office automation is fascinating, and it does have a number of mainframe centric networking solutions available to it in addition to the twinax native to this range. Regards Colin Eby