hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2706.txt

Episode: 2706
Title: HPR2706: Why I love the IBM AS/400 computer systems
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2706/hpr2706.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 07:51:28

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This is HPR Episode 2766 entitled, why I love the IBM ASUS 400 computer systems.
It is hosted by your own pattern and is about 29 minutes long and can remain a explicit flag.
The summary is a short talk about how I came to love the IBM ASUS 400 systems and why.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Hello folks, Kay Wisher here to remind you that it's that time of year again, time for the Hacker Public Radio New Year's Eve Show.
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that is 5am Eastern Standard Time, we will have a recording going on the HPR Mumble Server for anyone to come on and say happy New Year and talk about whatever they want.
We will leave the recording going until January 1st to start the video.
We will have a recording going on the HPR Mumble Server for anyone to come on and say happy New Year and talk about whatever they want.
We will leave the recording going until January 1st, 2019, 12am UTC, that will be 7am Eastern Standard Time or until the conversation stops.
Please visit hackerpublicradio.org to find all the details and links about how to set up the PC Mumble client, your favorite mobile app, the mobile server connection details.
Our etherpad show notes and the live audio stream if you only prefer to listen in on the lively banter.
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Thank you very much.
Hello and welcome at another episode or another podcast by me, your humble servant of course.
Well my name is let's start with the intro and then I'll tell you this is going all wrong but it's spontaneous but it's prepared at the same time but you know put me before microphone and I start rambling but well I'm trying so bear with me.
This is a talk about the AS 400 system, the IBM AS 400 system or systems or family of systems or whatever you like.
So that's the main topic for this talk but let me give you a small introduction about myself. My name is, well I'm Dutch so my name pronounced in Dutch would be your room button and I know that sounds awful if you're not Dutch.
Anyway I'm a nerd, I'm a geek, I'm 55 by the time that you hear this, I'm self-employed, I'm into the Linux, I'm into Python programming language, I'm into programming in general.
I've been a cessetment for years, I like geek stuff, I like mainframes, I'm related or not but if they're not emulated it's the real deal and there's a reason why they call them big irons so it's a hefty challenge and then there's the AS 400s of course.
So first, what is an AS 400? Well the AS 400 is the family of systems from IBM that they call mid-range and mid-range means of course in the middle of some range and I think the best way to explain this is at the low end of the computing range is what we call a PC.
Even if they are the top of the line with multi-processor, gazillion RAM etc in terms of range, computing range it's still at the low end.
Then you get the middle range which is an IBM balance at least, the AS 400 and then the high end is what we would call a mainframe.
So a mainframe is a lot of computing power mainly focused on bringing you the highest throughput for your data so throughput means getting as much data from A to Z in as little time as possible.
So that's high end so AS 400 wouldn't be mid-range and between a mainframe and a high end PC there's still an awful lot of space in between and that's filled with well the AS 400 but it's not well the AS 400 is a family of systems so even within the AS 400 you have the low end systems which are comparable to a PC I guess.
And then there's the high end and the high end is a big boxes with lots of memory lots of processing power lots of throughput and it's still not a mainframe yet but it's getting close at least at the time they were popular.
So it's a range of systems and it's a family of systems and you have them from very small up to very big.
I met the AS 400 while I was working at a large chemical plant in the south of the Netherlands if your Dutch or near the Dutch border or you know a little bit about our country you know what I'm talking about and the organization I'm talking about but let's leave it at that.
Anyway they had an AS 400 model E45 and I knew nothing about it I was much younger of course because this was back in 1993 or about so I'm now 55 so you do the math I was I was a lot a lot younger at least and I knew a few operating systems if you could call them dead.
I knew about MSDOS I knew about Atari or Atari I knew about simple basic PCs I knew about I don't even knew a little bit about novel network for the server operating system for PC networks.
I knew Windows Windows for workgroups and and then I met this this this huge system which was a AS 400 model E45 today it's specs would be very unimpressive but at that time it was a big system and a lot of people were working on it so they did the enterprise resource planning on that system.
They bought some software package and and even had people working full-time building customizations and and it seemed to everybody was happy but it was completely different from what I've seen before.
I mean there was a menu system once you got logged in there was a command line so you could enter commands there was no mouse and everything was different but although it was different
it was nice at the same time so nice that I recently started an AS 400 museum but more on that subject later in this talk.
The AS 400 was the code well when it was developed the code name of that project was silver lake it was named for the lake in downtown Rochester Minnesota where development of the system took place and the AS 400 as such as a real product saw the light of the in 1988.
I even have a nice t-shirt with a text AS 400 running the matrix since 1988 because of all those nice phosphorus green letters that you see popping up on your screen.
Anyway the AS 400 itself was the successor to the system 38 that started 10 years earlier in 1978.
That system at that time was revolutionary and it had three major concepts even today there are some strange concepts in there.
So for instance it used single level storage so to the user there's no difference between what's in memory and what's on disk it just works you enter a command it just works.
Of course everything is stored on disk but to the user the disk is far and away you don't touch a disk you don't do you can change into a library but you don't change into a directory as such it's just a library on the system that you go into and it's somewhere on the storage.
It had an integrated operating system it had security built in but it also had a relational database set in.
There was software development tools you could very easily make a database, query the database, design screen forms to enter data or display data from your database.
Whatever you like it had communication tools etc etc and the other thing it was built with a hardware independent machine interface.
It was using a hardware abstraction layer the hell HAL and everywhere in the IBM documentation about AS 300 you read about the hell the the hardware abstraction layer.
What it does is sort of the operating system is divided into two layers and the first layer is a harder specific layer so that's of course hardware dependent and that's the hell itself because at the other side of the hell it would present an abstracted system image to the operating system on top of that.
So all the operating system tools menus whatever are written and compiled to some form of abstract pseudo code that would be then executed by the hard abstraction layer.
So it's similar to Java you know you have this you program a language it's compiled into Java bytecode and there's actually not really a system that can run Java bytecode so you need a virtual machine but Java appeared in 1993 so that's about five six years after the AS 300 and even 26 years after the system 38 which already had a harder abstraction layer.
So clearly they were earlier with that kind of thinking well because of the complexity of the system 38 that appeared in 1978 there appeared a simpler version system 34 and a version with a nice menu system called system 36.
Now clearly the successor to system 36 and system 38 could be system 40 but now they had to do something else so they called it AS 400 for advanced system 400 instead of system 40.
So it was the direct successor to the system 36 so single level storage integrated database a security model and a menu system and your OS on top of the hell.
Now at first the hardware was 48 bits based with a SISC processor so that's complex instruction set computing SISC.
But it changed IBM changed the hardware in the 90s to 64 bits risk based systems and risk sets for reduced instruction set computing and because of the hell application migration to the new hardware was for all the users very simple because IBM itself converted the hell layer
from SISC to risk but everything above that level all the operating system tools all the applications everything just kept on working it so the migration was a breeze.
In some way in 2000 in the year 2000 IBM changed the OS 400 name to E server I series I know I can't even pronounce it but I'm not native English but I think that even English people have trouble saying this.
What they did they made all everything was an enterprise server so that would be E server and then you had the I series for integrated you with the X series for X64 68 bits and you had well the B for performance at the P series but anyway so the AS 400 changed to the E server I series as part of IBM's systems branding initiative.
And in 2006 that was again renamed to system I now I know you're probably a little dazzled by all these different names so let's call it what it is it's still to my in my heart it still is for a hundred system no matter what any marketing drone of no matter what any company representative will tell me.
In April 2008 IBM announced that this was nice it's integration with the system P platform so you had system I which was the successor to the E server I series which was the successor to the AS 400 only in name you know the heart was separate of course also new but anyway.
And the system P would be the AI X platform so the the IBM Unix operating system and in April 2008 they announced that they would integrate both hardware families into one platform and unified product line is called IBM power systems and feature support for the IBM I and IBM I this is the kicker.
IBM I was previously know as I five slash OS or OS 400 so it's they they've been changing the name and maybe it's hip or whatever or some marketing of losing head to come up with a new abbreviation I don't know.
Anyway so the IBM power systems featured support for the IBM I also for AI X and the GNU Linux operating systems and this is all very nice and then of course the operating system itself is object based everything in there is an object and like I said the features including RDBMS and relational database management system.
And that one is called DB to slash 400 so it's a it's a sort of a slim down version of DB to maybe it's not slim down I have no clue because I'm not a DBA I just know that is an integrated database and if you need a database or you need to create a table it's just down a menu system it's so easy.
Anyway there's a menu drive an interface that support multiple user it's got block oriented terminal support and that's the IBM 50 to 50 product terminal protocol and you can of course print stuff to printers.
Recent operating system versions can also run web based applications which can be executed inside the optional IBM web sphere application server for people who are still using that and having migration migrate to jbos yet or you can even do PHP slash my SQL applications inside a native port of the Apache web server.
So well there they're pretty much up to date which is it's cool there's a lot of software there and you can get a lot of fun stuff to use.
So unlike the everything is a file sort of a mantra of Unix and its derivatives on IBM I everything is just an object with build in persistence and garbage collection.
And it offers Unix like file directories if you really need to use the integrated file system it's got Java compatibility implemented through a native port of the Java filter machine.
I mean it's all there that everything is a PHP is there port it of course my SQL is there port it Ruby is there today there's a lot.
Well and like IBM mainframe operating system IBM I use this app dick as the inherent encoding so it's not as key or you to wait it's the EBC DIC app dick character encoding that's that has a long history and comes from IBM mainframe systems.
With the introduction of always 400 release for IBM introduced what's called L bars logical partitions and logical partitions usually we think of partition as being a segment on a hard disk but in this case it allows just multiple systems to run on a single piece of hardware.
So the system is just you can divide the system using using software and say okay I want on my physical system I want two or three completely separated computer systems so many much memory and so much processing power and so much so much hardest to one system and so much memory and processing power and hard disk to the other system.
So logical partitions and you can even use run different operating systems within those partitions.
Well how does an as for 100 work well let's start at the very beginning and starting an as for 100 takes a while it has to read the file system it has to construct construct some system tables in memory and this takes some time during IPL and that stands for initial program load you see a lot of status codes appear on one after the other on the front panel of the system.
All in all about some I've counted them on a table 94 different codes so let's give some example if it would say C600 4106 it would mean IPL all the system buses if it would mean C600 4107 it would say start the SLID it could mean initialize context management
initialize components of the C slot initialize the MISR but even as something a trivial set time of day.
In the end you will see a log on screen appear on the terminal now all communication is screen oriented and not character oriented like I said before it uses the 50 to 50 protocol and not the 30 to 70 protocol for IBM mainframes.
Having said that it's still screen oriented is just another type of terminal and no doubt there was a huge potential for a new type of terminal in the market at that time I don't know.
The administrator account which on the windows would be administrator and on a unique system would be root on on an as for on the system it's called the QSEC offer or in other words it stands with it starts with the QSEC OFR
or for some reason everything on an as for on the starts with the Q I don't know why but the SEC offer stands for security officers that's much is clear.
And default that profile can do everything unless of course you limit its credentials but normally default the QSEC offer user can do everything on the system.
If you've been successful in logging on there is a menu where you can choose options like option one for user tasks option two for office task etc etc and even option 90 to log off.
And if you choose option one you get a sub menu with new options if you would select two for office task you would gather office task menu presented so you can walk around the system if you're not familiar with it.
At the bottom of the screen is a list of function keys you can use things like F3 and it's the same as in the mainframe so F3 is to exit your menu or go back to the one before.
F4 would be for the command prompt F9 to retrieve last command etc etc well besides using the menu you can jump around in the system using commands.
And this is where it also is very nice because these commands are abbreviated strings for instance to display a user profile the command would be display user profile.
That's very simple but you would abbreviate it as short as possible and then it becomes DSP for display you are for user and PRF for profile.
Now that's to display a user profile if you want to work with a user profile it would be work user profile and then the what I just was a DSP for display would become WRK for work.
And then of course I will after the WRK the USR and PRF.
If you want to display the system status it's of course well what do you think yeah you're right a DSP SYS STS and you would get a screen presented that would show you the system status.
Now on to the operation of the system itself because the operation of the system is not like what you may be familiar with it's job oriented.
So when you start a program in a way effectively you submit a job to the system and it means that the job enters into a job queue and then the job queue feeds into a subsystem.
There can be multiple subsystems with different processor priorities as well as memory limitations.
And that means that there is an awful amount of tuning options available so the system can be very complex in its workings.
And well you should know what you do as a Sysadmin but you know default out of the box it just runs nicely.
But as you can add subsystems you can add job queues and you can tweak tuning parameters to your heart's content.
The AS-400 is renowned for its stability. There are many urban legends of an AS-400 simply put behind a brick wall in error you know there's just somebody comes in and says oh I need to put a wall here you just put a wall there and people completely forgot that there was a computer behind that wall but no matter what it just kept on running for years.
So at some point they had to relocate the office and it's like okay why is the network not down well there's still a server running somewhere in this building and they find it somewhere cemented in behind a brick wall.
So it's very stable it's got gazillion of possibilities what you can do with it but at the same time it's also a very hacker unfriendly platform.
So for instance yes it uses scusy disks but if the disk identification string does not contain the word AS-400 this system will not accept it which of course let's do ridiculous pricing.
Hence me saying that is a hacker unfriendly platform at this time and this is a personal note at this time I consider this to be a dying breed of computers.
I'm sorry I just just the way I think it is. There are many happy users and organizations and it did have a great time but at a great performance system but at a steep price.
Maybe you can replace one big AS-400 system with 30 or 40 run-of-the-mill intel servers to get the same throughput but hardware, we prayers, sys admin and development knowledge can be found anywhere and that's not quite the same with AS-400 system.
So I think it's dying it will take a few more years you know it's sort of a dying slope that will take years and years but then I guess the last use will stop using the last use will someday stop using it.
Well because of my admiration for this hardware and software family I started a museum called www.as-400museum.org that's www.as-400museum.org.
So sorry for the small commercial there it's just well you know it's an initiative and I hope people like it. There's no I'm not into it for the profit I mean I just called it a dying platform so who am I kidding and the thing is at first I had acquired two old AS-400 systems but then a friend of mine who has been working AS-400 since it appeared on the market in 1988.
He donated a huge pile of stuff to me. Currently I have not too but I have for be it relatively small but still I use for other systems but I also now have hundreds of CDRMs with OS software and a pile of original drives to play around with tapes.
I even have computer tapes with the actual original AS-400 release 1.0. Yeah talking about museum stuff right.
I have several 50 to 50 twin ex-terminals for demonstration purposes it's not a lot and they will die in the end so if you have some laying around I'm being more than happy to take them off your hands and of course that goes for all the AS-400 stuff that you will you have in your vicinity.
In October of 2018 I was one of the exhibitors at the Berlin vintage computer festival the VCFB.DE and in April 2019 I will also make an appearance at the vintage computer festival in Munich the VCFE.org.
So it's not in Berlin it's the VCFE.DE what's the top level domain name and in Munich it is the VCFE.org for the E4 European and org of course organization.
And well maybe I see there I mean there was I see I think that vintage computer festivals will increase in size and frequency simply because there is at this time how shall I put this it's it's like at some few years ago it was history in the making making but now it's history so there's something to show.
And and people interested in historical stuff and in old computer system what how did things work at that time for instance how did a crazy super computer be how was it that it was so damn quick at that time so much quicker than everything else I know by now because but because somebody explain it to me I didn't know before but it's there's so much to learn and and to be amazed about.
So no doubt there will be more vintage computer festivals in the near future and luckily if I'm lucky I'll try to attend them and show people what an age for 100 system is because it's I was there with one system and two terminals and people you see people walking up to you and thinking that's a box and it's black it's probably a PC but why are there two screens and there's no mouse.
So you have to explain that it's a server system and you can have two terminals or you can have 500 and still would run well all my box probably 500 will be a little overkill but well you get the point when I announced this recent initiative you know the WWAS from the Museum of the Dog on Twitter I got a nice response from Henry Sprock thank you Henry and I don't worry I know it's an alias.
But anyway he was asking if I was going to be if this was going to be my next talk at Ogkamp in Sheffield UK well all I can say is who knows maybe it's it's they got me making to to making podcasts so I might just really turn the favor and show up just one more time and enjoy some English beers and and some really nice talk with friendly people.
So I don't know well there's just just that tiny thing called Brexit but we'll see what happens there.
So all I can say who knows anyway I invite you all to read more about this adventure at www.os400museum.org and with that I would like to sign off and say till we meet again.
I was nice talking to you I hope you like this and I'm going to sign off and start thinking about what my next podcast should be about.
So if you have comments ideas think she would like me to talk about just mention them in the comments below this podcast and well who knows maybe your idea is a winner.
Sorry no pricing or prices involved just the honor of being the one presented with the idea.
Okay bye-bye.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.