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Buying an IBM Mainframe
- OldManAndTheCpp 7y agoDissatisfied with the performance of a home raspi? Buy a mainframe!
- Causality1 7y agoHe dropped over $23,000 on a mainframe just to "play with and learn how it works"? Finally he can run a personal Minecraft server.
- dang 7y agoPlease don't post shallow dismissals or be snarky on HN. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bluecmd 7y agoWould you have liked the project more if the price was not disclosed?
- Causality1 7y agoOh I love the project. I'm just in awe of spending that much money for something you don't have a clear and present need for.
- closeparen 7y agoIn my parents' generation, it would have been a project car.
- diarmuidc 7y agoYou're on the wrong website
- cominous 7y agoIs it just for the fun or is there actually a legit use case for having a mainframe at home apart from accelerating climate change?
- Nextgrid 7y agoFun 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.
- badpun 7y agoI wonder how much cheaper it is to implement software for one, huge machine that „just works”, vs the usual way of implementing for a network of distributed machines. Distributed programming is NOT easy, and, even if the hard parts are supposedly implemented by various protocols/frameworks, these solutions constrain the way you can program and also have a ton of „interesting” failure states - just take a look at logs of say Hadoop cluster that’s been running for a while - even though the cluster is supposedly running fine (or is it?), you’ll find various kinds of exceptions related to the distributed model (socket timeouts and whatnot). Not to mention trying to thoroughly understand various eventual consistency models. 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.
- bluecmd 7y agoAuthor here, I agree 100%. It is just a different way of building software, which is why I find these things so interesting. It challenges my worldview and thus I want to learn more about its upsides and downsides. CICS and IMS definitely made it easy to create scalable software decades ago. It is not that different from the frameworks we have invented to make distributed systems viable that you mention, which I find insanely cool. One of the cool things of running e.g. Ceph is that it exposes a familiar API (POSIX filesystem) which makes things easy to integrate with. The mainframe is like that but for hardware. VMware has similar things to some degree where your VM can be kept alive across hardware failure, but not really on the same level. Anyway, I will stop here but I could go on for hours :-)
- cosmodisk 7y agoThis is what you do when you don't get PlayStation when you are a kid...
- purplezooey 7y ago1700 watts, all the time. Yikes.
- glogla 7y agoThat's pretty solid space heater.
- quickthrower2 7y agoVery inefficient though. But solid!
- dx034 7y agoIs it inefficient? Some of the energy will be converted to light, but all the rest should be converted to heat? If you need constant heating and use electricity for heating, wouldn't a mainframe be as efficient as any other heating?
- Tor3 7y agoIt would. Unless you could replace the electric heating with a heatpump though - then you would get more heat out of each kW you put in. But replacing an old-fashioned electric wall heater with a 1700 W mainframe would be totally equivalent. So no, a 1700 W computer isn't more 'inefficient' than a wall heater of the same wattage. The light is neglible and it too ends up as heat anyway.
- sliken 7y agoHeh, exactly. Even the light will quickly be turned into heat once it hits something. Sure some might escape through a window, but that's going to be vanishingly small amount of the total energy.
- sliken 7y agoActually it's 100% efficient in terms of converting electricity into heat. Anything that consumes electricity is near 100% efficient at generating heat. If you tried really hard you could build a very efficient laser and send heat outside the room, so not 100% would end up in the room. Even then the majority of heat will be dissipated in the room.
- kev009 7y agoIt's a lot cheaper in to do this in the US and with a long term view, my total outlay was under $3000 for a z800, z114, ds6800 all in with transportation. I also temporarily had two DS8870s but resold them because they were worth a lot more than I paid and I will pick up another for cheaper over the course of this year. Both of my frames have HMCs, the z114 was even IBM banded and "MSQ" maintenance service qualified which means they'd come and set it back up for some not-too-outrageous monthly fee if it were in production use. 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.
- bluecmd 7y agoHi kev! Thanks for your comments, you are 100% right. Yes, living in the states make this hobby waaay easier. The surplus auctions help as well, having various goverments with various languages going in Europe does not make it as easy :-). Was $3000 your outlay for the system + the DS6800? Or just the shipping? That is a great find in that case! I just want to correct a small thing: You need SEs (the frame mounted laptops), you do not actually need an HMC as far as I know. Do you have any information that tells another story? If so I will update the article. Thanks again!
- iuguy 7y agoIt's not the same, but if you'd like to have a go at mainframe technologies you can do it with a Pi Zero: https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/my-raspberry-pi-thinks-it-s-a-mainframe 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. http://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/ http://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/
- tyingq 7y ago"MVS 3.8 so not current Z/OS." Bit of an understatement, MVS 3.8j was released in 1981.
- bigato 7y agoYou'd be amazed at how little the underlying ecosystem has changed over the decades. Because it basically keeps compatibility forever, software that was written in the 60's can still run on modern machines. Because of this, learning using 80's software in the mainframe world is not too bad. For example, I keep a book on MVS on my desk from the 80's for reference, and most of the time it suffices for what I need to consult.
- tyingq 7y agoAt a high level, I suppose, but for example...3.8j is 24 bit versus the current z/os 64 bit.
- new4thaccount 7y agoNow this is an expensive hobby. I spent this on my last car (a necessity where I live). 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.
- unixhero 7y agoThis was an insanely cool read.
- bluecmd 7y agoThanks! Glad you enjoyed it :-)
- altmind 7y agoAre there any sucess virtualizing z/OS on x86_64? This mainframe is quite anemic even by modern desktop standarts.
- tyingq 7y agoSee the Hercules emulator: http://www.hercules-390.org/ http://www.hercules-390.org/
- hsnewman 7y agoIf you do go with virtualization, in addition to Hercules, you can possibly find a copy of the ADCD, which is a full release of the OS on the cheap.
- tyingq 7y ago"which is a full release of the OS on the cheap" It's a $900/year subscription if you go the legit route, and not "approved" to use with Hercules. You're supposed to pay ~$4k for zPDT to be fully legit. Thus, most hobbyist use is pirated torrents of ADCD on Hercules.
- monocasa 7y agoIn addition to Hercules, qemu supports s390x guests.
- jasonhansel 7y agoIBM makes it illegal for customers to build emulators for most mainframe products, to protect their business.
- monocasa 7y agoEveryone in that scene knows that it's not enforceable. Gene Amdahl literally started his own company making plug and software compatible mainframes, and IBM got hit with antitrust rulings trying to shut him down with lawyers.
- morgannewman 7y agoSo... What exactly can you even do with these?
- jandrese 7y agoMy interest in doing this (my wife would kill me anyway) kind of evaporated when in almost every paragraph he hit on licensing issues you might have. What a headache for someone who just wants to tinker on the hardware and maybe buy a few parts off ebay for the full experience. I have no doubt software updates, documentation, and everything is locked behind some portal that requires you to have a stupidly expensive support contract to access.
- jschwartzi 7y agoMy second thought about this was "no wonder IBM is largely dead outside of stodgy corporate IT. Nobody can actually learn to use it without dropping $100,000+ on equipment."
- Jtsummers 7y agohttps://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/education/master-the-mainframe https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/education/master-the... There's a contest open to students, but anyone can sign up to use these resources.
- Spooky23 7y agoIt’s worse than that. Most of these environments are in the stodgiest corner of those companies. I worked with one a long time ago as a consultant where we struggled with an authentication related issue. The response from the service owners was that they weren’t going to switch to a new, unproven methodology. In this case the “new” thing was around since like 1989 (this happened circa 2003). They still use whatever they were using today. As a new hire, you’re screwed. Anyone getting into mainframes is insane.
- pickle-wizard 7y agoBack when I was at IBM one of the hats I wore was AS/400 administrator and programmer. I miss working with it and would like to buy one for my home lab, but the licensing is a killer. I find used ones on the market, but they usually don't include the license keys or media, and without a support contract can't get them. I really wish IBM had a hobbyist program. I wouldn't expect it be free, but I wouldn't mind paying a small yearly fee.
- jasonhansel 7y agoMy current side project idea: build a modern programming language with a nice syntax that compiles (transpiles?) to mainframe COBOL, mostly to get mainframe programmers to stop writing code in SHOUTING ALL CAPS.
- jasonhansel 7y agoNote: is anyone interested in using something like this? If so, let me know! I'm curious as to how I can make it useful for people in the field.
- danpalmer 7y agoAs I understand it, the field is going in the other direction, namely JVM/CLR COBOL. This means that companies can migrate their COBOL codebases to “commodity hardware”, save on mainframe costs, and then progressively refactor into Java/.NET replacing bits of COBOL piecemeal. The main company I’ve heard of doing this is MicroFocus, they have all the dev tooling for it for the major IDEs, compilers, etc. One of the main things that complicates the problem, again as I understand it, is that there is no official COBOL spec. There are several versions from several vendors, but compilers have to account for mainframe hardware bugs, so there are many different targets that have to be supported. Most companies want a different, specific, set of compiler features.
- jasonhansel 7y agoHmm. I'm interested in making a compile-to-COBOL language only because that way a company could incrementally migrate an old COBOL codebase to the new language. In other words, the new code (which compiles to COBOL) and the old code (written in COBOL) would be fully interoperable, sharing the same data types, calling conventions, etc.
- danpalmer 7y agoYeah, and this makes sense, but there are multiple problems with COBOL on mainframes – the COBOL, and the mainframes. COBOL and mainframes have quite a different programming and system administration model to what we expect with servers. Lots of concepts are quite different, built up from a world of mainframes and terminals, tapes, batch processing, etc. Concepts like users, operating systems, files, networking, parallelism, programs, databases, are all quite different, and all of these differences cause companies problems in training users, and creating nice new software that works in ways people expect now. Creating a, for example, JavaScript to COBOL compiler is probably not fully possible. You may be able to transliterate it, but you would essentially be writing a COBOL program in JavaScript syntax – not using Node libraries and writing React components. This reduces many of the benefits. The alternate approach is that you take your COBOL and compile it to work in the JVM. You get a JAR out that you can run on your regular servers that are already running your other JVM software. There is probably a significant runtime built into that by the compiler that translates some mainframe concepts into modern concepts, but that's fine because you haven't had to rework your COBOL. Then, you can progressively pull out modules, rewrite in Java, and reference those from the old COBOL code. You don't need lots of training in mainframe concepts, you don't need to spend millions of dollars a year on your mainframe, and you can write new code in Java. The US Department of Defence have taken this approach one step further, and are actually writing a compiler from COBOL to Java. It's not fully automated, but with not too many developer-hours, they can turn significant chunks of COBOL into reasonably good quality Java, over the course of several stages. Your idea is a good one, and worth experimenting with maybe, but I think the best approach for the migration away from COBOL for large businesses (and only large businesses use it) is the other way around.
- pickle-wizard 7y agoI cringed when he said he bought a DS6800. When I worked at IBM we had about 20 of them and they were shit. Always broke and getting into weird states. No way I'd run one with a support contract.
- kev009 7y agoMy understanding is a team ported the ESS "Shark" code from AIX to the little Linux 2.x embedded controllers. It looked like Adaptec OEM hardware when I tore mine apart. I can see how that would go poorly versus the proper cabinet sized arrays. They are definitely good enough for home use but I agree not what you want any production workload on. I heard from a 3rd party support company there is some part that is prone to failure but I cannot recall what it was.
- pickle-wizard 7y agoYeah I found the root linux password online. There was more than once I had to SSH in and fix the SLIP connection between the controllers when they went into a brain split. If I recall correctly they were running SuSE Linux with Websphere App for management and DB2 storing all of the configuration information. I hadn't heard they traced their linage back to the shark. That surprises me a bit because we had several of those and they were very reliable. Though thinking about it that makes sense. Hopefully the later software fixed the reliability problems. I got rid of all of ours in about 2010 or so. Replaced them DS5000 on the Open Systems side (which had their own set of problems), and DS8000s on the Mainframe side. The DS8000 was pretty rock solid.
- callesgg 7y agoIs there something that makes these ibm mainframes special like some feature? Are they simply like a big computer?
- floatboth 7y agoFrom what I've heard, redundancy and scalability in a single machine (like, you can hot-swap CPUs on a running machine and have lots of redundant RAM, etc.) and being able to run an OS with backwards compatibility all the way to the fscking 1960s or whatever. That OS is… something: https://medium.com/@bellmar/hello-world-on-z-os-a0ef31c1e87f https://medium.com/@bellmar/hello-world-on-z-os-a0ef31c1e87f
- unixhero 7y agoJust wondering: What kind of problems do you hope to solve? Are there anything in particular you will use it for?
- wglb 7y agoAnd for some security bits, check out https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBVy6TfEpKmGdX1OE_xjK0GKGjSLwxVn_ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBVy6TfEpKmGdX1OE_xjK... which as also some general mainframe access info. His twitter feed is https://twitter.com/mainframed767?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor https://twitter.com/mainframed767?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ct...