4 ms·

These machines were amazing. Rock solid. Never crashed, never need someone to reboot it and if something went wrong it would call IBM and say it needed serv

These machines were amazing. Rock solid. Never crashed, never need someone to reboot it and if something went wrong it would call IBM and say it needed service and what components were impacted (if it knew). In some companies these things were in a closet, under piles of other things and everyone had forgotten about its existence. Then comes the IBM rep to fix it and there is confusion about its existence. The operating system was genuinely interesting. I wish they had open sourced it. They were not sexy, they didnt have games (actually a couple) did run much sofwtware you knwo about but that it did it was very good at.

bluepizza 4y ago
They are so slow, though. DB2 and API performances are atrocious. This is a machine designed to run batch jobs, and nothing else.
- protomyth 4y ago
  I haven't seen that its slow, except when the RAID battery is off. Generally the IBM rep shows up when that happens.
- bluedino 4y ago
  > They are so slow, though. I guess that depends? I used to go to an AS/400 ERP software conference every year. The number of users dwindled and each year was a game of "Who's missing this year..." Rightfully, everyone was going to SaaS products or Windows-based systems. One year, I didn't see a group that was usually there (they were missed as always bought tons of company swag to give away). Emailed the CTO after the conference to ask what was up, and they were 75% complete switching over to one of the big-name, Windows-based on-prem ERP systems. They bought the software, 4/5 Windows licenses for SQL, IIS, backup server, etc. The next year they were back at the conference! They could never get the new software to process their daily shipping fast enough for it to work.
sedatk 4y ago
I worked at a company for 3 months in 1998 and the AS/400 there crashed once. It required IBM personnel to come and fix it. So, I like the narrow scope of the machine and certain concepts in the OS, but “rock solid” might as well be an urban legend.
- protomyth 4y ago
  We've has one and its successors (iSeries) since the 90's and we have never had a crash of any sort. We've had hardware failures, but the IBM rep fixes those and the machine never crashed because of any of them. The damn thing is rock solid and we bought a new one (Power9) last year.
- flomo 4y ago
  Probably around the same time, we had a client where IBM convinced them to install Lotus Notes/Domino on their iSeries, which ran their factory assembly line. This caused extended downtime and cost them tons of money. IIRC they ultimately installed a Pentium II board into the iSeries running NT and ran Lotus off that... silly
- traceroute66 4y ago
  > but “rock solid” might as well be an urban legend. I can indeed confirm that "rock solid" is an urban legend. I swore I'd never have anything to do with the AS/400 or IBM after a certain incident. I need to be careful what I say, but basically there was a certain fault with a certain chip on a certain board. The so-called IBM technicians we called out ultimately proved to be completely incompetent. Our engineers were collecting hard-facts data on the fault(s) we were seeing. But the IBM guys could never find the problem. In the end, because IBM engineer after IBM engineer continued to sign-off the machine, we had little choice but to allow it to continue in production albeit with close monitoring. In the end, it ended up with an almighty climax event. Let's just say its the first (and hopefully only) time I've witnessed an IT company's Professional Indemnity insurance being used in anger to pay for recovery (and indeed why if you are involved with the management of an IT company you should ensure such insurance is in place). TL;DR The client's AS/400 was thrown onto the scrap heap as soon as humanly possible after an all-hands-on-deck accelerated migration away took place.
bluedino 4y ago
> They were not sexy, they didnt have games (actually a couple) I'm not aware of a Doom port, but there are some console-based games that would be put to shame by a ZX81 http://www.jcrcmds.com/jcrgames2.html http://www.jcrcmds.com/jcrgames2.html
robotnikman 4y ago
This is basically what the Admin of the AS/400 systems at my current place told me. He says he has never seen one crash.

bluepizza 4y ago

They are so slow, though. DB2 and API performances are atrocious. This is a machine designed to run batch jobs, and nothing else.

protomyth 4y ago
I haven't seen that its slow, except when the RAID battery is off. Generally the IBM rep shows up when that happens.
bluedino 4y ago
> They are so slow, though. I guess that depends? I used to go to an AS/400 ERP software conference every year. The number of users dwindled and each year was a game of "Who's missing this year..." Rightfully, everyone was going to SaaS products or Windows-based systems. One year, I didn't see a group that was usually there (they were missed as always bought tons of company swag to give away). Emailed the CTO after the conference to ask what was up, and they were 75% complete switching over to one of the big-name, Windows-based on-prem ERP systems. They bought the software, 4/5 Windows licenses for SQL, IIS, backup server, etc. The next year they were back at the conference! They could never get the new software to process their daily shipping fast enough for it to work.

sedatk 4y ago

I worked at a company for 3 months in 1998 and the AS/400 there crashed once. It required IBM personnel to come and fix it. So, I like the narrow scope of the machine and certain concepts in the OS, but “rock solid” might as well be an urban legend.

protomyth 4y ago
We've has one and its successors (iSeries) since the 90's and we have never had a crash of any sort. We've had hardware failures, but the IBM rep fixes those and the machine never crashed because of any of them. The damn thing is rock solid and we bought a new one (Power9) last year.
flomo 4y ago
Probably around the same time, we had a client where IBM convinced them to install Lotus Notes/Domino on their iSeries, which ran their factory assembly line. This caused extended downtime and cost them tons of money. IIRC they ultimately installed a Pentium II board into the iSeries running NT and ran Lotus off that... silly
traceroute66 4y ago
> but “rock solid” might as well be an urban legend. I can indeed confirm that "rock solid" is an urban legend. I swore I'd never have anything to do with the AS/400 or IBM after a certain incident. I need to be careful what I say, but basically there was a certain fault with a certain chip on a certain board. The so-called IBM technicians we called out ultimately proved to be completely incompetent. Our engineers were collecting hard-facts data on the fault(s) we were seeing. But the IBM guys could never find the problem. In the end, because IBM engineer after IBM engineer continued to sign-off the machine, we had little choice but to allow it to continue in production albeit with close monitoring. In the end, it ended up with an almighty climax event. Let's just say its the first (and hopefully only) time I've witnessed an IT company's Professional Indemnity insurance being used in anger to pay for recovery (and indeed why if you are involved with the management of an IT company you should ensure such insurance is in place). TL;DR The client's AS/400 was thrown onto the scrap heap as soon as humanly possible after an all-hands-on-deck accelerated migration away took place.

bluedino 4y ago

> They were not sexy, they didnt have games (actually a couple) I'm not aware of a Doom port, but there are some console-based games that would be put to shame by a ZX81 http://www.jcrcmds.com/jcrgames2.html http://www.jcrcmds.com/jcrgames2.html

robotnikman 4y ago

This is basically what the Admin of the AS/400 systems at my current place told me. He says he has never seen one crash.