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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 m

by 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.
ThinkBeat 4y ago
My sample is of a couple of hundred AS/400 machines. This was prior to the rebranding to iSeries They were used for accounting, logistics, and point of sales systems at different companies. Common for nearly all was that they lacked any IT department or even a sole tech geek. Nothing is perfect. it makes sense there might be some lemons around but from my experience they were the most reliable platform I have ever been in contact with. in different companies used mostly for accounting, logistics, and some POS systems that were entirely lacking any IT department or even the odd tech geek.
- aerostable_slug 4y ago
  >in different companies used mostly for accounting, logistics, and some POS systems that were entirely lacking any IT department or even the odd tech geek. I saw this as well, at least in a way. As a contractor a few weeks out of college, I worked at a regional telco provider that had an AS/400 used for accounting etc. While a reasonably tech-ey firm (they were an ISP as well as providing pager service, frame relay, and other fun relics of a another era), nobody really knew how the AS/400 worked so they were a little wary of letting the new guy use it. It hadn't ever gone down to anyone's recollection, but they were pretty sure that with the staff they had they wouldn't know how to quickly bring it back up if things went pear-shaped.

by sedatk 4y ago

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.

ThinkBeat 4y ago

My sample is of a couple of hundred AS/400 machines. This was prior to the rebranding to iSeries They were used for accounting, logistics, and point of sales systems at different companies. Common for nearly all was that they lacked any IT department or even a sole tech geek. Nothing is perfect. it makes sense there might be some lemons around but from my experience they were the most reliable platform I have ever been in contact with. in different companies used mostly for accounting, logistics, and some POS systems that were entirely lacking any IT department or even the odd tech geek.

aerostable_slug 4y ago
>in different companies used mostly for accounting, logistics, and some POS systems that were entirely lacking any IT department or even the odd tech geek. I saw this as well, at least in a way. As a contractor a few weeks out of college, I worked at a regional telco provider that had an AS/400 used for accounting etc. While a reasonably tech-ey firm (they were an ISP as well as providing pager service, frame relay, and other fun relics of a another era), nobody really knew how the AS/400 worked so they were a little wary of letting the new guy use it. It hadn't ever gone down to anyone's recollection, but they were pretty sure that with the staff they had they wouldn't know how to quickly bring it back up if things went pear-shaped.