3 ms·

Mainframes are shockingly legit. Don't get me wrong, - they're the least sexy possible technology, imo. But they do _work_ in a way that I've rarely seen. Th

Mainframes are shockingly legit. Don't get me wrong, - they're the least sexy possible technology, imo. But they do _work_ in a way that I've rarely seen. There's a tradeoff between flexibility and stability - the mainframe is just hardcore stable. Sucks to work on a lot of the time, but _damn_ if there isn't a reason financial institutions still do mainframe batch processing.

LinuxBender 6y ago
I would gladly take a z15 or two or three [1]. Ability to spin up any number of instances almost instantly, blazing fast speed between them... just super expensive and there has to be a business need to justify the support costs. People often mistakenly think this is old tech, but that could not be further from the truth. One could have their own massive VPS region in a box with much faster deployment of code. [1] - https://www.ibm.com/products/z15/details https://www.ibm.com/products/z15/details
- speeder 6y ago
  I saw some old mainframes in a junkyard... considered buying them only to be told that someone that knew they were going to be sent there, purchased them before they even arrived... I think it would be hell cool to have a mainframe at home :) Assuming it is not ludicrously expensive to keep it running...
  - bluGill 6y ago
    I recall for y2k IBM was selling replacement mainframes because the new one was faster and you would pay for it just on power bill savings in 2 years. That the old one would never get the updates to work after y2k was not really a factor in sales. The old mainframes were water cooled and very power hungry, newer chips (now 20 year old technology) were air cooled and used less power.
  - cptnapalm 6y ago
    Keep an eye out for a Multiprise 3000 from 1999. It's the smallest of them and runs on regular household electricity at 1300W. If you do find one, make sure it has the hard drives intact or it'll be a 400 lb. paperweight like mine :(
- devdas 6y ago
  After all, the cloud is mostly a mainframe with a self service interface.

LinuxBender 6y ago

I would gladly take a z15 or two or three [1]. Ability to spin up any number of instances almost instantly, blazing fast speed between them... just super expensive and there has to be a business need to justify the support costs. People often mistakenly think this is old tech, but that could not be further from the truth. One could have their own massive VPS region in a box with much faster deployment of code. [1] - https://www.ibm.com/products/z15/details https://www.ibm.com/products/z15/details

speeder 6y ago
I saw some old mainframes in a junkyard... considered buying them only to be told that someone that knew they were going to be sent there, purchased them before they even arrived... I think it would be hell cool to have a mainframe at home :) Assuming it is not ludicrously expensive to keep it running...
- bluGill 6y ago
  I recall for y2k IBM was selling replacement mainframes because the new one was faster and you would pay for it just on power bill savings in 2 years. That the old one would never get the updates to work after y2k was not really a factor in sales. The old mainframes were water cooled and very power hungry, newer chips (now 20 year old technology) were air cooled and used less power.
- cptnapalm 6y ago
  Keep an eye out for a Multiprise 3000 from 1999. It's the smallest of them and runs on regular household electricity at 1300W. If you do find one, make sure it has the hard drives intact or it'll be a 400 lb. paperweight like mine :(
devdas 6y ago
After all, the cloud is mostly a mainframe with a self service interface.